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Remember, I'm only speculating, but my guess is that it's less about the money he'd be paid for an hour on set or for the use of his likeness and more that if WB exercises their option on his contract for his image or for cameos, that extends the contract further -- perhaps a year, maybe less, maybe more. And if their wish is to allow the contract to expire (as they did with Brandon Routh), then they don't want to use Cavill unless they have a new contract with a paycut (which I doubt Cavill would accept). WB has a contract with Cavill; he is obligated to work for them if they exercise their option. They have chosen not to use it for now and may choose not to use it at all.

I'm wondering if the reason it took so long for Affleck's departure to be announced is because WB was also waiting for his contract to expire. Please remember that this is purely hypothetical and this would be a very good time for Informant to come in and tell us all that we don't really know what the investment-to-earnings ratio even really is.

Man, do you have to bring everything back to SLIDERS? ;-)

**

Anyway, some more thoughts on studio tinkering which may or may not relate to what happened with JUSTICE LEAGUE: I was reading one of the many drafts of SPECTRE, the last James Bond movie. SPECTRE is a note-perfect example of how the studio process of tinkering with a script as it's being filmed is not constructive.

The SPECTRE released to theatres starts well: Bond's investigating a mysterious organization, Spectre, that may have compromised his organization. There's a gripping sequence where Bond infiltrates a Spectre meeting and the mysterious leader knows of him already, identifies him on sight and greets him by name. Bond barely escapes.

Then there's a confusing revelation where Bond finds a ring worn by members of this organization. This ring indicates through confusing exposition that the villains of the previous three films were part of this organization -- a strange retcon as none of these past villains wore these rings.

There's a limp romance with a doctor whose father worked for Spectre, then a middle-of-the-story confrontation where Bond gets to Spectre's secret base and confronts the Spectre leader, Blofeld, who is (a) a new version of the 60s Bond villain and (b) Bond's foster brother in this continuity.

Blofeld takes credit for the previous three movies' villains, but it's unclear how those films tied into Blofeld's goals of infiltrating all government intelligence assets. At no point does the film use Bond and Blofeld's shared past and history for conflict or drama. It's so inessential; it might as well not be there.

Blofeld straps Bond into a torture chair that Bond escapes through means I don't understand. Bond blows up the entire secret base through a method that I don't understand. I've watched this sequence 10 - 15 times. There's then a lifeless climax in London where Blofeld attacks Bond's headquarters and escapes in a helicopter and Bond, pursuing the helicopter on a boat, shoots down the distant helicopter with a pistol (?!?!?) and arrests Blofeld before walking away with his boring girlfriend.

It's very odd. Reading an earlier SPECTRE shooting script, however, explains a lot of what the hell is going on here (at least creatively if not within the story of the movie). As originally written, the Blofeld character wasn't Blofeld; he was Franz Oberhauser (which Blofeld uses as an alias in the final film). Sony wasn't happy with this.

Looking at the changes, it seems they stipulated that Oberhauser be rewritten into the Blofeld, the world domination pursuing mastermind of the 60s movies with Sean Connery. Sony had only recently acquired the rights to use the Blofeld and Spectre concepts. Spectre was already in the script, but Sony wanted Blofeld too.

Sony could have simply renamed the Oberhauser character as Blofeld. But Sony also wanted Oberhauser's villainy to reflect the extravagant, exaggerated aspects of the 60s Blofeld and these additions don't mesh well with the script around them.

In the script, all the connections to the previous films were much more low-key. The script indicates that Oberhauser employed the villains of previous Bond films on his own projects for financial management, for acquiring resources, for technical design -- but the final film overinflates this to Oberhauser nonsensically claiming responsibility for every evil plot in the last three Bond films. It's not supported by the previous films and it falls flat. The story was better when the connections were low key.

The script also has a very tight focus on the Bond/Oberhauser conflict as foster brothers. Oberhauser and Bond were both adopted; Oberhauser was jealous that Bond seemed to monopolize their foster father's love. Oberhauser has spent his life watching Bond from a distance, spying on our master spy, obsessing over Bond. Oberhauser represents all of Bond's sociopathy and cruelty at a permanent extreme point.

This also ties into the Bond girl of this movie, Madelaine. The script has a few extra lines about how she rejected her father for his disregard for human life; it's why she became a doctor, it's why she rejects Bond. And the script has Bond defeating Oberhauser and in doing so, conquering his own demons and winning Madelaine's confidence.

As scripted, the first confrontation between Bond and Oberhauser has them playing cards for each other's lives and recalling their childhood rivalry, presenting Oberhauser as a jealous, murderous evil twin. Sony replaced this with Bond in the torture chair because the 60s Blofeld used deathtraps.

The torture chair scene also replaces the scripted sequence where Bond spots all the gas lines in the secret base and works out how to trigger a chain reaction to blow it up. In the finished film, Bond seems to fire his gun randomly and the base obediently explodes for him.

The finished film doesn't show Blofeld's lifelong jealousy of Bond, doesn't show how Blofeld has modelled himself on Bond. It was all in the script. It didn't make it to screen.

I can sort of understand why Sony didn't think this was a big deal. They were simply giving their villain a different name and tweaking the sequence of tormenting Bond. They were making their film more reminiscent of the source material. But the underlying theme of the script as written: Oberhauser was a dark mirror image of Bond.

The 60s Blofeld character is an evil genius manipulator, aloof and distant from the action, a contrast to Bond as a man of action. This character is not a mirror image of Bond. By making Oberhauser more like the 60s Blofeld, Sony obliterated his relevance to Bond and also removed Madelaine's purpose as representing the humanity that both Bond and his brother had discarded. That's why the Bond/Madelaine onscreen romance had no heat, no tension and no passion. It was on the page, but Sony mislaid it.

The final act of SPECTRE as released, despite being mostly unchanged from the script, feels completely detached from the rest of the movie. It worked in the script. But in the movie, Blofeld's attack on Bond's headquarters no longer relates to their relationship as brothers.

There are little revisions which aren't a big deal. Some of Bond's scripted action scenes have been redistributed to Moneypenny and M and Q. The sequence of Bond shooting down Blofeld's helicopter with a pistol, as presented on paper, has Bond discovering he only has three bullets and he has to aim carefully and make it count, which at least acknowledges the unlikelihood on display.

Throughout SPECTRE, Sony kept tweaking the Blofeld character to make him bigger and more important to reflect the source material. Sony executives were up in arms over Blofeld/Oberhauser not being evil enough, his plan not being epic enough. They were concerned that the Oberhauser villain didn't live up to the Blofeld name. But their revisions didn't make Oberhauser/Blofeld a stronger villain; they only diluted the arc they already had.

The third act of SPECTRE that Sony kept trying to 'fix' went from being taut and tense to laboured on the page to disconnected and perfunctory because the conflict between brothers was no longer in the movie.

SPECTRE needed to either be the story of Bond facing his evil twin or Bond facing a master manipulator. Sony had the first one. They tried to hammer it into being the second and the result was a confused mess. Sony should have commissioned a new script written from the start to feature the 60s evil genius instead of the evil twin version. But filming had started and Sony couldn't stop.

In that case, Sony should have left the SPECTRE script alone and let the filmmakers elevate the story above any of its flaws through performance, visual spectacle, editing and pacing. Instead, they kept trying to retrofit Oberhauser's personal, intimate villainy into the classic Blofeld, but Oberhauser didn't need to be the classic Blofeld to be an effective character. They kept trying to fix what wasn't broken and they broke it.

One of my favourite YouTube videos from which I clearly stole the iPad/Android comparison
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snYH1wtu4tQ

If you don't want to watch it, the upshot of the video is that a YouTube technology vlogger, Nate Burr, once made a web article called, "How to install Android on an iPad," and it consisted nothing but a photo of an iPad. On the iPad screen was an image of Data from STAR TREK. Burr was later alarmed to discover that this post was constantly drawing traffic from people using search engines to seek out instructions for how to install Android on an iPad. He proceeded to make a video, remarking:

What an interesting perspective from Zicree! It certainly rings true.

I don't know a lot about Seth MacFarlane's personal life, but he writes women well. I've only seen a season or two of FAMILY GUY, but Lois was written as being Peter's equal in depravity and sexual independence and regularly mocked any objectification even as she invited it. With THE ORVILLE, Kelly is written as cheating on Ed but is not defined by her infidelity but rather her skill at delegating and sense of fair play. Dr. Finn is older than most female protagonists on network TV and written as a professional with her own sexuality as opposed to having it presented in terms of male desire. Alara was written as a young adult learning job the job with her romantic life acknowledged but as only one factor in a varied existence.

That said, I thought Alara's exit story was clumsy. I totally agree with you about the *intentions* being kind towards the character and performer, but the actual story has Alara struggling with a physical ailment, finding a solution -- but then turning her back on it because pursuing a relationship with her family is for some reason impossible to pursue while holding down a day job. Do they not have Skype?

It was confusing, but I could see that MacFarlane wrote it that way because he wanted it to be entirely Alara's choice to leave the Orville. And I can see why MacFarlane didn't want to have Alara promoted off the Orville to Section 31 or take another assignment because the character hadn't really earned a new position, so it had to be her choice to step away from her career. I would have written Alara out off-camera with a line saying that Alara's self-inflicted psych experiment last year had caught high command's attention and she was now helping to devise cadet training programs back on Earth. But there was a wish for an onscreen story that made it clear Alara could return whenever she or the actress chose.

Hopefully, THE ORVILLE will run for so many years and produce so many episodes that the Alara-episodes of Season 1 will just be an oddity of its early installments.

I have total trust in the AGENTS OF SHIELD showrunners. I rewatched the entire show a few months ago and saw them struggle through the restrictions of Season 1, create their own mythology in Season 2, rebuild their own version of SHIELD in Season 3, delve into the magic and reality-bending plots of Season 4 and leap into the future with brilliance and aplomb for Season 5 and with a drastically reduced budget. I think they are splendid and I have complete faith in their creativity and commitment.

**
So, Marvel-Netflix. I finished THE PUNISHER's second (and probably final) season and... it's fine, I guess. It's a Marvel-Netflix show and I've come to the reluctant conclusion that Marvel and Netflix have the completely wrong approach to superhero stories.

Like all Marvel-Netflix shows, THE PUNISHER has an excellent cast, thoughtfully scripted dialogue, gripping action sequences, expensive location filming and in-depth characterization. It also has entire episodes of characters standing around talking with no progress made.

THE PUNISHER has enough plot for maybe six episodes (Frank wandering and getting involved with Amy who is hunted by John Pilgrim; Frank returning to New York City to face Billy Russo; Frank and Amy confronting John Pilgrim). It's padded out to 13 through having the characters sit around having solemn conversations. However, the conversations are about the characters as opposed to THE DEFENDERS where the conversations were about "the substance" and "the city."

Frank, Amy, Madani, Pilgrim and Curtis have strong arcs that are unfortunately slow. Russo's arc with his therapist is awkward; Floriana Lima is a great actress who doesn't convey why Dr. Krista Dumont would shelter and bed a murderous psycho and upend her life as a successful health care professional.

The script indicates that Dr. Dumont has sadomasochistic tendencies, but Lima either by decision or direction, plays her role as very rigidly in control with only brief glimpses of madness, so brief it's forgettable. As a performer, Lima seems best when she plays active characters like Maggie Sawyer on SUPERGIRL. She's a great actress; she's just the wrong actress to play reactive passivity in the Marvel-Netflix house style of standing around talking solemnly.

DAREDEVIL's third season showed greater concern for episodic progression than previous Marvel-Netflix shows. By the end of each episode of DAREDEVIL S3, we'd learned something new, gotten somewhere different. With THE PUNISHER, the episodic endpoints are arbitrary. Aside from the first two and the last two episodes, there is no real thought given to giving each episode specific developments.

THE PUNISHER has many of what Darren Mooney on The M0vie Blog calls "narrative cul-de-sacs" with Frank and Amy and Madani waiting on or pursuing a plot point that doesn't advance the story but fills out the length. And unlike the other shows, THE PUNISHER's plot doesn't allow standalone stories.

The other four shows could have given the heroes a few one-off villains or cases to add bulk. THE PUNISHER, however, features Frank being drawn back into a war he's trying to leave behind; neither Season 1 nor 2 lend themselves to one-off situations. THE PUNISHER would have worked better by telling its Season 2 story in six episodes -- and then coming up with a new story for the subsequent seven, perhaps with a brief hiatus between the two segments.

I think we've only got 13 Marvel-Netflix episodes left: JESSICA JONES, Season 3. We're near the end (unless I'm wrong!). And, looking back, the Marvel-Netflix deal was a mixed bag. DAREDEVIL's first season was excellent, JESSICA JONES was terrific but the cracks showed with Kilgrave repeatedly entering and leaving and entering to stretch the story to a 13 episode size.

LUKE CAGE did well for six episodes and then fell into disarray in the second half. DAREDEVIL's second season was incoherent with three movie length plots (Elektra, the Punisher, the Hand) stretched across 13 episodes. IRON FIST was a disaster. THE PUNISHER S1 was adequate. THE DEFENDERS featured all of the Marvel-Netflix characters but also all the problems. DEFENDERS' vivid characters were muted by the dull tedium of the series. Overall, the Marvel-Netflix aesthetic is that of people standing around having solemn conversations. If that's the sort of story that Marvel and Netflix want to tell, then superheroes are the wrong characters to feature in these stories.

Audiences watch superhero shows to see them using their powers and dealing with the results; audiences want to see superheroes investigating plots, fighting villains, saving civilians, protecting their secrets, cracking wise, training their abilities, solving problems and engaged in action. Even the worst episodes of SMALLVILLE had Clark using his superpowers to save somebody and SMALLVILLE is one of the stupidest superhero shows ever made.

I don't know what Marvel TV and Netflix were thinking. Audiences who want to see characters standing around talking are unlikely to watch superhero shows; they would find a different genre where characters aren't so defined by their physical actions and abilities. The Marvel-Netflix aesthetic is a creative death sentence for superheroes.

Shockingly, the aesthetic of a Marvel-Netflix show is the same as a Season 5 episode of SLIDERS -- episodes where showrunner Bill Dial rewrote scripts for the budget by cutting anything expensive and then filling the massive content gap with scenes where characters re-state previously established information until the timeslot is filled. His rewrites on "The Great Work," "Please Press One," "Map of the Mind," "The Java Jive" and other episodes where characters meander aimlessly while repeating information is precisely the Marvel-Netflix model.

Which leads to my guess that despite the high production value of location filming on New York City, the budgets weren't sufficient and that's why action on these shows was constantly isolated and restricted to individual episodes with the bulk of the content featuring overstretched, elongated scenes.

JESSICA JONES and LUKE CAGE had solid second years with CAGE's showrunner even apologizing for the last six episodes of Season 1. (Informant disagrees with that.) IRON FIST's second season was good and DAREDEVIL's third season was masterful. Overall, these four showrunners had either found their feet with their budgets and episode counts or learned from their predecessors. And THE PUNISHER's second season was absolutely fine, at times great and often very slow with long conversations to stall the plot. It was a Marvel-Netflix show.

I would like for this era to receive a proper conclusion with a short second season for THE DEFENDERS. But to be honest, I'm not really broken up about Netflix ending their partnership with Marvel. All the shows found reasonable(ish) points of conclusion. And the Marvel-Netflix shows were very inconsistent, often overstretched, shockingly short on superhero action and frequently dull.

These shows were constantly boring. Season 3 of DAREDEVIL defied this reputation, but in totality, there were just too many episodes of Matt, Jessica, Luke, Danny, Frank and Sigourney Weaver having slow and solemn discussions. All too often, it was like watching Season 5 of SLIDERS, specifically "Map of the Mind" in which the sliders perform a procedure to heal Diana's brain damage -- then perform the procedure again -- and then describe what they just did to Diana as though the viewers needed a third iteration of the same action.

It's repetitive, it's tedious, and it's been an interesting experiment and I'm sorry it's ending, but I'm not sorry to move on. Anyway. I might copy-paste some of the above after JESSICA JONES airs its third (and probably final) season.

I totally forgot to comment on JOC's performance in this show!

He was fine.

I'm excited for it. All I ask is that we not make Informant watch it.

When the Punisher was first created, he was shooting jaywalkers and Spider-Man took him down. But the design of the character was a hit, so it was later revealed that he'd been under mind control in his first appearance. Some very good writers like Chuck Dixon and Steven Grant wrote the character, but the Punisher's massive overexposure matched with a thin characterization (he's a murderous thug who massacres villains) eventually flattened sales along with the collapse of the comic book market.

In the late 90s, horror writers Christopher Golden and Tom Sniegoski relaunched the Punisher as an angelic demon hunter with heaven-empowered weaponry, a sincere effort to add some dimension that was met with universal mockery.

A second late 90s relaunch saw Garth Ennis dismiss the angelic Punisher instantly with a few captions about how the angels punished the Punisher for disobedience by stripping him of his powers and putting him back on Earth, not realizing that being surrounded by criminals to kill was everything he wanted. The angelic Punisher has never been spoken of again. Ennis presented the Punisher as a straight-laced mass murderer (of villains) in a black comedy where all the villains were grotesque monstrosities and it was a pleasure to see the Punisher eviscerate them one by one.

Superheroes occasionally guest-starred and were presented as ineffectual parodies of how they'd normally be written and the Punisher easily humiliated Daredevil, Wolverine and Spider-Man. Eventually, Ennis sought a more serious approach and re-relaunched the character with THE PUNISHER MAX, set in a more real-world universe without superheroes and more realistic villains (rapists, human traffickers, child pornographers, etc.), but aside from the loss of humour, the approach was the same.

Eventually, Ennis tired of the title and did a final PUNISHER mini-series set back in the mainstream Marvel Universe with his original black comedy approach to end his run. At this point, Marvel split the Punisher's continuity in two: the mainstream version (who had experienced all the MAX adventures) got involved in CIVIL WAR, was killed off and resurrected as a Frankensteinian monster who continued hunting criminals like nothing had changed, and was then de-aged by a decade or two (to account for how he could still be a Vietnam vet).

The MAX version of the Punisher continued as a separate series for 22 by Jason Aaron and what Ennis had implied, Aaron made overt. Aaron revealed Frank's darkest secret (even if his wife and family had lived, he would have abandoned them) and exposed Frank as addicted to murder. These 22 issues have Frank accidentally kill a police officer due to age and slowing reflexes (as the rejuvenation never happened to this version of the character) at which point he's hunted by the police and any pretense of heroism evapourates. THE PUNISHER MAX ends with Frank killing Bullseye and Wilson Fisk but suffering fatal wounds and dying.

Meanwhile, the mainstream Punisher continued during an interesting time in Marvel when most of the heroes after Civil War were considered no less criminal than the Punisher, and when Norman Osborn assumed control of the US Government, the Punisher's renegade role was deepened even further. There was also a neat storyline where the Punisher thought he found legitimacy when Captain America declared himself the ruler of the United States and drafted the Punisher into service, only to discover that Cap had been replaced by a Nazi when the real Captain America returned.

I can't say I enjoyed any of the Punisher's comics, but they were *interesting* and written by excellent writers. The most successful version of the character was probably the comedic Ennis version as it could be enjoyed by those who enjoyed the ultraviolence and those who found it palatable because it was funny. Ultimately, the Punisher isn't a character I enjoy, and I get the sense that the Netflix show is run by people who have exactly the same feelings I do about the comic book character who are as uncomfortable with this character as I am.

The Marvel brand is in the business of heroes, and the TV version of Frank Castle has only the the surface-level aspects of the character. If they'd had full access to the Marvel library at the time, I could see them wondering if maybe instead of a Netflix Punisher show, they ought to instead do LOGAN... probably not with Hugh Jackman. Maybe Justin Hartley or James Marsters.

When visiting my niece at her house:

INT. FRONT HALL - DAY

Ib is walking through the hall when he accidentally barefoot kicks a HARDCOVER BOOK lying on the floor. He looks down and shrieks.

IB: "Gaahhhhhhh!!!!"

Lauren dashes down the stairs.

LAUREN: "What!? What!? What?!" (surveying the scene) "Did you kick the book? I told Mom not to leave it lying around -- "

IB: (pointing a shaking finger at the book cover) "He killed Dad!"

Lauren stares at Ib, looks down at the book and picks it up. The cover reads THANKS A LOT MR. KIBBLEWHITE: MY STORY, by Roger Daltrey.

LAUREN: "Uh. Your dad's not dead and... wait, is this about that time travel show?"

IB: "You KNOW it's not a time travel show. I think you call it that just to annoy me a little."

LAUREN: "Only a little, but I notice it annoys you a lot. Was Roger Daltrey on SLIDERS?"

IB: "Uh. Yeah. He plays this crazy US colonel who sucks the wise Professor's brain out and shoots him dead and then the Professor's corpse is left on a planet that explodes."

Lauren winces at the description and studies the book cover.

LAUREN: "My mom bought this book as a gift for someone, but then she wanted to read it first. I wouldn't really expect this guy to be playing a psycho killer."

IB: "Yeah, I don't know what his deal was -- he was on LOIS AND CLARK, also playing another slasher type character. He's not very good at playing villains. In real life, he's a drunk, affable goofball, but the only time I ever saw him playing a drunk, affable goofball was on HIGHLANDER."

LAUREN: "Well, he's a musician."

IB: "Are you saying that all musicians are drunk, affable goofballs?"

LAUREN: (thinking on this) "Yeah!"

I just want to say that the shot of Ed flying a shuttle past Kelly's quarters to see who she was dating is the most hilariously stupid thing ever written for a science fiction series. And I say that as someone who wrote a scene where Rembrandt attacked the animal human hybrids with a bag of peanuts.

This might have fit in better with the Arrowverse thread, but it's political in nature. Since the Season 2 finale, SUPERGIRL has raised a question it hasn't been able to answer: where is Jeremiah Danvers? Where the hell has Dean Cain been?

His character was introduced as Kara's foster father in the pilot, thought dead in the present day, revealed to be alive in Season 2, exposed as being in league with Cadmus, an anti-alien terrorist group, for reasons unknown, aside from a hint that Lillian Luthor was building something for him in exchange for his help.

Jeremiah didn't appear in the Season 2 finale when the Cadmus arc was resolved and a defeated Lillian Luthor said that she didn't know where he was. Cain never returned to SUPERGIRL. Seasons 3 - 4 have acknowledged Jeremiah's existence without indicating his whereabouts and neither production nor Dean Cain have publically addressed his absence.

Why? I've heard that it's because during Season 2, Cain publically supported Trump in the election. And even though he was contracted as a guest star, production decided not to have him on set again after Season 2's fifteenth episode and cut all ties with him. They didn't want Cain associated with the SUPERGIRL brand, a brand that would later take a hit worse than anything Cain might have inflicted when showrunner Andrew Kreisberg was investigated for sexual harassment and fired off all his shows.

I don't know how I feel about it.

Michael remarked on God: "Me and my brother -- my Lucifer -- when we fought in my world, we thought that God would come back. Give us answers: why he'd gone, what we'd done. But instead, you know what happened? Nothing. No God. Nothing. And now -- now that I'm in here -- now I know why. God -- Chuck -- is a writer. And like all writers, he churns out draft after draft. My world, this world -- nothing but failed drafts. And when he realizes that they're flawed, he moves on and tries again. Because he doesn't care! About you, me, anything."

As you, Informant, are a writer, what were your thoughts on Michael's thoughts on Chuck as a writer?

How do you feel about this plot point now as addressed by Michael?

Side-side note -- I'm trying to figure out how to combine your thread with this one, but when I did it earlier, it glitched badly, so I put it back the way it was.

I disagree with calling THE ORVILLE a parody, but it could be that we just use this word differently. I agree that it's a clone. But to me, "parody" describes content that is made to exaggerate another work for comedy and mockery. THE ORVILLE doesn't imitate THE NEXT GENERATION's highly formal, measured scripting style. It uses an approximation of TNG's set design with just enough variation to avoid a lawsuit. It mimics TNG's plots, but I don't believe THE ORVILLE's values oppose TNG's at all -- if anything, THE ORVILLE is a more sincere version of TNG's self-professed progressivism with non bipedal characters, Captain Mercer being nervous about imposing his values on alien species, etc..

The Planetary Union and the Federation have the same ideals, so I don't think THE ORVILLE mocks TNG at all; I think THE ORVILLE mocks itself by showing how the characters stumble and trip and stagger towards the goals that were effortless on TNG. I think THE ORVILLE could have been ENTERPRISE. You could have had the characters be more prone to bickering and silliness because they're from a less disciplined, settled era of Starfleet culture with humanity just starting out.

I also really like how the ORVILLE characters are balanced: they are not the perfect action figures of TNG, but they are also not the angst-machines of RIVERDALE or the incompetents on HEROES -- there's a very careful mix of personality traits, so they come off as normal people. Mercer's furious about Kelly's infidelity, but he's also capable of being civil. Gordon is dim-witted and a drinker, but not uniformly incompetent, just at times unreliable. That balance to avoid both extremity and blandness is very difficult and it's a credit to MacFarlane's writing and the actors that they can pull it off.

And if you wanted me to find a way to bring THE ORVILLE into the STAR TREK universe, you could go the simple path of establishing that it's an alternate timeline like the Mirror Universe. But another route: you could reveal that what we've been seeing on THE ORVILLE are historical records that have been corrupted and reconstructed, and when they're properly recompiled, the Orville is a Federation starship, everyone's a Starfleet officer, and all the episodes we've seen and aliens we've met are as we saw them -- but with a tweak here and there to account for the transporter.

Sadly or happily, THE ORVILLE is owned by Disney right now and I can't imagine them selling it to CBS or CBS wanting to buy it, and I don't know that THE ORVILLE *needs* to be STAR TREK now, just that it *should* have been at the outset. Even with DISCOVERY adopting a more jocular, bombastic scripting style, TREK has a very militaristic tone whereas the tone of THE ORVILLE is distinctly that of the office comedy and it would have added to the diversity of tone that Alex Kurtzman's chasing.

As the moderator of this forum, I carry heavy responsibilities and it is with the utmost thought and care that I have decided to rename Slider_Quinn21's thread to add THE ORVILLE into the mix, a decision I gave a full and uninterrupted four seconds of thought.

**

One of my favourite STAR TREK sites is ST-HYPERTEXT on which Jamahl Epsicokhan complained of THE ORVILLE: "This isn't a 'reimagining' of a well-known universe. This is a blatant carbon copy with simply the names changed. Warp drive? Ours is quantum drive. United Federation of Planets? Ours is the Planetary Union. You have Klingons? We have Krill (who look like the Jem'Hadar). We both have starships, shuttles, uniforms with insignias, corridors, bridges, captains' ready rooms, things that look like phasers and tricorders but might not be called those things, and aliens with prosthetic makeup. But why go to the trouble of spending all this money to take a trip down memory lane if you aren't going to bother to rethink what the universe itself is or how it works? Where's the unique point of view and take on the material?"

There is a unique take, it just isn't in terms of the science fiction or the world building. The unique take is: what if STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION were staffed with a cast of professional but awkward people with petty uncertainties, not so buried grudges, career anxieties, frustrations with colleagues, desires for creature comforts (like soda when flying the spaceship), broken marriages, drunken mis-steps, embarrassing relatives and other issues? What if TNG but with flawed human beings?

As much as all the TNG characters had arcs and failings, Seth MacFarlane noted quite hilariously: nobody on TNG was ever bad-tempered, bleary-eyed from a late night, eating lunch at their workstations, grousing about infidelities or watching the ship's captain argue with his ex-wife on the bridge with the captain's parents later asking if he'd gotten that colonoscopy.

THE ORVILLE is emerging from the new trend of shows like PARKS AND RECREATION and BROOKLYN NINE NINE which have taken professions like government and law enforcement which are usually shown with importance and elite aplomb, and rendered them as filled with awkward, silly, conflicted, ridiculous, normal people inhabiting a workplace comedy. And THE ORVILLE is now taking a similar perspective to the workplace environment of a Federation starship. It is a pastiche, but it isn't a parody -- it's just asking: what if TNG had a cast of people instead of paragons? What if Dan Harmon wrote STAR TREK? It'd be like this.

I think THE ORVILLE should have been a TREK series -- maybe one set in the 29th century to give the TNG era some breathing room -- and maybe it still could be.

I really like what tom2point0 said about the show:

Look, I'm inclined to think anyone who wears a MAGA hat and goes to that school is awful, Season 3 awful. But we can't determine whether or not Sandmann harassed Phillips on January 18 at the Lincoln Memorial based on headwear, academic enrollment and events that didn't take place on January 18 at the Lincoln Memorial.

Sandmann could be a racist and bully who burned down my house and stole my car and stabbed my grandmother and drank my last ginger ale, but he could be all of those things while still committing no acts of harassment on that Friday in Washington. And I actually do think Sandmann drank my last ginger ale. Someone did.

If you can contradict Informant's assertions based on the footage, please do; if not, then I don't really see what grounds you (or I) have for disagreement.

Informant, I apologize. It was a reaction. It wasn't a position. "OF COURSE Informant would take the side of whoever was white, he always sides with cops when any cop shoots a black guy. Oh. Facts are on his side in this one. Oh, thank GOD I didn't weigh in or I'd never hear the end of it." (Looks like I will anyway.)

I thought it was funny to point out my immediate thought process, a process which I withheld from public consumption until afterwards. I wouldn't present my immediate reactions as actual opinions because such reactions aren't always informed or correct. I thought it was self-mocking. Instead, I have hurt your feelings. I'm sorry. I don't think you're a racist. I don't really know what I think of you, I find you something of a wildcard.

You're the guy who recognizes Bryan Singer as a sexual assaulter but doesn't see Donald Trump as the same. You said Henry Cavill couldn't play Superman because he was American; now you find Cavill's performance excellent. I'm never sure about anything with you and my mental image of you is often contradicted by actual reality.

I feel like there might be one key incident to explain you to my personal satisfaction, but I've never figured it out – your reaction to the character of God on SUPERNATURAL in "Don't Call Me Shurley." You asserted that God in this episode was merely pretending to be depressed to spur other characters to action. The episode, however, is quite clear that God is being entirely candid about his exhaustion and exasperation and subsequent episodes reinforce this.

You had a view of God; the onscreen depiction contradicted your view, so you declared God to be lying in order to match your personal framework for the character. It says something, I'm just not sure what and may spend the rest of eternity contemplating what your deal is based on this anecdote. Regardless, I certainly respect your analysis, writing and thought processes even if I often find the end results ones that I reject.

And regarding this matter in general: at the outset, my instinctive response was to think Nick Sandmann a bully based on the images, screenshots and articles.  But I didn't say what I thought because I don't trust my reactions to screen captures -- not after a deeply unpleasant incident with Kari Wuhrer.

Back in 1998, before Season 4 had aired, I raged about Wuhrer's inability to hold a rifle convincingly and posted a mocking screenshot of her ineptitude on her fan site, screeching about how she clearly didn't take her profession seriously and didn't care about the show and was part of the all-out assault on SLIDERS' values, storytelling, legacy, platform and cast.

Wuhrer responded and apologized (yes, really) but noted that as an actress, she depended on the on-set weapons handler to show her how to handle guns for that scene; she couldn't simply summon that knowledge out of thin air. She also said she'd been working with the new writers on making Maggie's character more likable and would be grateful if SLIDERS fans gave her a chance to change our minds. (Actually, thinking back, her agent may have been typing all this.)

During Season 4, fans were livid over Jerry's hungover performances and screencapped frames where he looked sleepy -- except some of these supposedly dead-eyed images were sometimes taken from episodes where he was actually pretty good (that week) but blinking at an opportune moment for a mocking still.

In a former iteration of this forum, a poster who went by "breederbutter" called Cleavant "the racial hire" and a terrible actor who should never have gotten top billing and selected a Season 4 clip to indicate Cleavant's bad acting -- a clip where Cleavant's reaction to a squib for a gunfight was slightly muted. It's a selective shot that doesn't reflect Cleavant's skills at all.

And in this recent situation, we have people reading a lot into Sandmann's facial expression in a select frame that may or may not reflect the subject's inner thinking or intentions. Sandmann has posted an explanation (which I skimmed and which others have found credible with the full footage).

My opinion? I don't have one -- I shouldn't be offering any opinion until I have an hour and 46 minutes to watch the footage and I'm not sure I want that to be my job. If Informant's watched the footage in full and thinks Sandmann's personal account is reasonable and correct, then I'm going to defer to him on this one. If pilight wants to watch the footage and debunk Sandmann's account, please do, but I am getting the sense from the various mea culpas that history will be on Informant's side this time.

The simplest explanation within the previous TREK shows: Starfleet rolls out new uniforms gradually as we saw with THE NEXT GENERATION where even after the TNG outfits were redesigned for Season 3, numerous crewmen and officers were still wearing the Season 1 - 2 uniforms (because the costume designers didn't have the budget to replace all the costumes immediately). This was also present in DEEP SPACE NINE where the DS9 crew met the TNG cast and the TNG cast were in still in the old uniforms. The initial implication was that the DS9 uniforms were for space station staff, but by GENERATIONS, the TNG cast had made the switch indicating that the uniforms were changed slowly. In-universe, I assume Starfleet has new uniforms come out gradually so that they can identify any problems before wider distribution/replication. And Pike accepts an older uniform because he wants to indicate that he's part of the Discovery crew while he's acting captain.

One of the Shatner novels (SPECTRE) has Spock commenting that Starfleet constantly tweaks the uniforms because regularly making little adjustments to the workplace lets employees know that their supervisors are paying attention and invested in their working environment.

I suspect that when you think of Quinn, you think of him in from ages 20 - 24: the brilliant but shy scientist of Season 1, the driven but inexperienced genius adventurer of Season 2, the unconvincing action hero of Season 3 or the emotionless weirdo of Season 4 -- whereas these days, when I think of Quinn, I think of the 45 year-old version in my fanfics and while you script-edited the last one, it's unreasonable to expect you to go to that as your default for Quinn.

But another area where I think of Quinn as sort of the dollar store version of Ethan (or rather, a more dysfunctional, far more imperfect version) -- I don't consider my Quinn (or any Quinn) the leader of the team. The Professor is the leader whereas I can't really see any version of Tom Cruise's MISSION IMPOSSIBLE where he isn't in charge (regardless of whether he answers to Anthony Hopkins or Laurence Fishburne or Alec Baldwin).

I'd like to move back on topic, but I didn't get around to seeing AQUAMAN.

My God. RIVERDALE used to be about high school students in a small town. Now it's this... I don't know, horror-crime show with supernatural overtones investigating a homicidal version of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS and... what?

Well, so far they have:

(a) Fired the Season 1 showrunners of DISCOVERY.
(b) Promoted the back room producer who didn't make any of the decisions for Season 1 to run the show.
(c) Commissioned an eighth season of STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.
(d) Rehired Patrick Stewart.
(e) Commissioned an animated STAR TREK comedy series.
(f) Cancelled STAR TREK IV(2) -- although that was Paramount, not CBS.

Anyway. I'm going to consider DISCOVERY's second season to be the first season of ALEX KURTZMAN's STAR TREK. Hopefully, it'll be the Kurtzman who wrote for FRINGE and TRANSFORMERS PRIME and not... TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN or THE MUMMY, both of which seemed to leave him with post traumatic stress.

Well, Kurtzman was the showrunner with JJ Abrams and Roberto Orci for Season 1 of FRINGE (before they ceded it to Joel Wyman and Jeff Pinkner for the rest of the series). Kurtzman wrote Season 1, Episode 19 which had an exchange in which Olivia and Peter encounter a man who claims to have information about a process of genetic alteration:

OLIVIA: "What process?"
GRAYSON: "To create super soldiers."
OLIVIA: "Super-soldiers."
GRAYSON: "Yes. Like Khan Noonian Singh. To defend us in the coming war."
OLIVIA: "What war?"
PETER: "I'm sorry. Khan?"
GRAYSON: "Yes."
PETER: "As in THE WRATH OF... ?"
GRAYSON: "Yes."
PETER: "Let me guess. This war, it's against... "
GRAYSON: "The Romulans. Renegade Romulans from the future, here to change the timeline. The sworn enemy of the Federation.
PETER: "The Federation. That would be the United Federation of Planets."
GRAYSON: "Yes."
PETER: "Hmm. And you know this because?"
GRAYSON: "I am the son of Sarek."
PETER: "Which makes you Spock."
GRAYSON: "Yes."
PETER: "Well, Mr. Spock, thank you for your time. We'll let you get back to the bridge now."
GRAYSON: "Live long and prosper."

The thing about STAR TREK in its modern incarnations is that Alex Kurtzman didn't make the decisions with which you take issue. STAR TREK (2009) going back to Kirk, Spock and McCoy recast and redefined was the studio's decision with JJ Abrams. DISCOVERY being set before THE ORIGINAL SERIES was Bryan Fuller's choice. DISCOVERY dismissing the anthology format was CBS.

Kurtzman has been a producer's screenwriter who executes his marching orders such as being told to make Kirk less like Shatner's character and more like Tom Cruise in TOP GUN or to make Spock angrier -- albeit with the view that by STAR TREK BEYOND, they'd be more like their TV counterparts.

It's been that way for most of his career. Kurtzman got his start on HERCULES: THE LEGENDARY JOURNEYS where he was parachuted into Season 4 when series lead Kevin Sorbo had suffered a series of debilitating strokes and couldn't be on set for more than an hour a day. His work has often been defined by labouring within pre-existing circumstances such as writing TRANSFORMERS movies based around action and 'comedy' sequences the director had already visualized or being forced to rewrite a monster movie into a Tom Cruise action vehicle or being given Electro, Green Goblin, Rhino as well as plans for spinoffs with the Black Cat, the Chameleon, Sandman, Mysterio, the Vulture, Dr. Octopus and told to write AMAZING SPIDER-MAN II out of it.

Your nemesis J. Michael Straczynski has talked a bit about writing for hire under such circumstances. In these situations, writers like Kurtzman must accept all the notes, even the ones that contradict each other ("We want Peter to investigate his father's legacy and we want to be ready to cut those scenes!"). Writers then try to execute these instructions in as professional and responsible a manner as one can. Kurtzman and his then-writing partner Roberto Orci were appreciated in Hollywood for providing producers and directors with the material they asked for without complaint.

When left to their own devices on the TRANSFORMERS PRIME animated series, Kurtzman and Orci delivered an updated yet lovingly reverential take on the franchise that was pretty well-received and in stark contrast to their feature film work. When working on STAR TREK comic books, Kurtzman took the opportunity to do a belated NEXT GENERATION finale. JJ Abrams took the blame for INTO DARKNESS' problems, saying that he'd asked his friends to write the scenes they did and he'd misguided them.

With DISCOVERY, Kurtzman has said that he was only involved in post production. I say wait for Season 2 before you judge Kurtzman as that's the only STAR TREK in which he's been making decisions as opposed to executing someone else's. It could be another TRANSFORMERS where the feature films he scripted as a hired gun were critically lambasted while the animated series he controlled as showrunner has received near universal acclaim.

And now, for Tech Talk with Quinn Mallory:

I adore coffee and have always been fascinated by Keurig coffee pod machines. I have, however, refused to buy one because the cost of coffee pods versus the cost of drip coffee was unworkable -- although, I confess, I ruin a LOT of coffee. Sometimes, the paper filters collapse inside the coffeemaker and the brew is filled with grounds. Sometimes, I miscalculate the water to ground coffee ratio and end up with too strong or too weak a result.

And, when wandering through my thrift store, I spotted a Keurig machine for $20 which was far more tenable than the $120 or so cost of most of these machines. So I bought it and bought some refillable pods as well (four for $15).

I got home and was horrified to discover: the reason this machine cost $20 is because it was made when Keurig tried to prevent customers from using coffee pods from manufacturers who hadn't paid Keurig a licensing fee by including a scanner that looks for infrared ink on licensed pods. The machine will refuse to begin the brewing process if the scanner detects a pod without the infrared ink made by a company that didn't want to pay Keurig licensing fees for putting hot water through ground coffee.

I grimly refunded my refillable pods and bought a single official Keurig refillable pod for an insane $20 -- if only to make sure the machine worked. It did. But this annoyed me so much that I started looking at hacks to overturn the DRM restrictions. Some hacks involved buying a licensed pod and taping the infrared inked label to the scanner lens, some involved using neon marker or neon-coloured adhesive paper and a clip.

One involved disassembling the machine, locating the cable that sent data from the scanner to the processor and cutting it to permanently bypass the DRM protocol. I felt Quinn Mallory would do the last one, so I took apart my Keurig 2.0, cut the wire and promptly lost the screws needed to reassemble it and spent some time on my hands and knees locating them on the floor.

Anyway. I guess I'll go run some descaling solution through the machine. Who knows what's been through it?

It's okay, Rob. I understand.

**

Mitt Romney was right about Russia. I laughed at him then and I was a dumbass to do so except Russia had yet to target the US electoral system so publicly. Romney was right, Obama was wrong, and Romney was also right when he condemned Trump during Trump's campaign.

That said, there was a curious hypocrisy to Romney calling Trump out for his "greed" given that Romney made his fortune by buying American businesses with borrowed money, then saddling those businesses with the debt of buying them which drove them out of business and their workers out of a job even as he called himself a "job creator."

Anyway. From "Gingerbread":

BUFFY: "My mom said some things to me about being the Slayer. That it's fruitless. No fruit for Buffy."

ANGEL: "She's wrong."

BUFFY: "I battle evil. But I don't really win. The bad keeps coming back and getting stronger. Like that kid in the story, the boy that stuck his finger in the duck."

ANGEL: "Dike. It's another word for dam."

BUFFY: "Oh. Okay, that story makes a lot more sense now."

ANGEL: "Buffy, you know, I'm still figuring things out. There's a lot I don't understand. But I do know it's important to keep fighting. I learned that from you."

BUFFY: "But we never... "

ANGEL: "We never win. We never will. That's not why we fight. We do it because there's things worth fighting for."

Good to know that as the United States faces judicial lunacy, gerrymandering, the collapse of its foreign relations, a government shutdown with federal workers expected to labour for free, a supposed bid for border 'security' that has TSA agents working for nothing, and an investigation into the president being compromised by Russian intelligence -- well, we can always count on Americans to zero in on the dumbest and most irrelevant piece of trivia they can possibly find and make it their central area of focus.

ireactions cannot stress in the name of all that is holy that no one poster's view, including this one, represents the view of the SLIDERS community.

I'm sorry you've not been well. What's going on with you? And your brother? And your father? And your curse of MacGyver?

**

I suspect that the lower resolution is a problem on a Note 8 because you have a 6.3 inch screen. I have a 5.1 inch screen and 720 pixels is still a lot of pixels.

Do you have any status bar burn in? Or burn in from the Always On Display and the navigation bar? Or is the slight pixel shifting that Samsung programmed in adequate for preventing burn in? The S7 uses capacitive buttons without a navigation bar, but I've disabled Always On and the status bar.

It's pretty great to have 4GB of RAM. I'd accepted that my Moto G5 Plus needed me to run the lite versions of Facebook and Messenger and constantly having to clear the RAM and close all apps and restart at night so it'd be smoother in the morning. The S7 doesn't need any kind of maintenance that can't be set and forgotten.

I think forming your own personal canon is very reasonable. SLIDERS is special in that all SLIDERS fan fiction is canon, even the one where Quinn and Wade have a fight for no reason and Wade gets shot in a robbery and Quinn writes and sings her a song to help her recover (try to imagine Jerry O'Connell singing). The STAR TREK novel fans are currently upset that a new Captain Picard series will ignore all the post-NEMESIS novels, to which I'd note that the novels continue to exist to be read and enjoyed regardless of whether or not the new series deals with them. The X-FILES comics were much more respectful of the mythology than the TV show and offered something of a conclusion to the myth-arc and I think most people who read it choose that over "My Struggle IV."

I quite like Informant's BUFFY scripts. I wouldn't compare them to the BUFFY comics; I wouldn't even consider them in opposition as much as heading in opposite directions.

Andrew Chambliss is the showrunner you're referring to. He's a good writer. Not to denigrate Informant, but overall, the reception to the post-show BUFFY and ANGEL comics have been very warm. ANGEL #1 - 17 sold well and drew rave reviews as did the SPIKE spin-offs. The first 3/4 of BUFFY: SEASON 8 was a smash hit, the latter end was acknowledged by Whedon himself as having gotten away from him. ANGEL #18 - 22 were universally panned and #23 - 44 had very mixed reviews. The subsequent BUFFY series and ANGEL & FAITH series under the SEASONS 9 - 11 banner were well-received; the SEASON 12 finale of four issues also got very good reviews.

It reminds me a bit of the virtual seasons of SLIDERS except where each virtual season of SLIDERS existed in opposition and contradiction as unofficial products, the Buffyverse comics were sanctioned and the Dark Horse line had the involvement of the series creators and some of the actors throughout.

Like any comic book series, the BUFFY and ANGEL comics had their ups and downs. The main problem with the comics -- if you consider it a problem -- is the same problem with THE X-FILES comic books, with SLIDERS REBORN, with STAR WARS and STAR TREK novels and with most post-series media tie-ins: they are oriented towards fans. The Dark Horse BUFFY comics are about the mythology of the Slayers; the IDW ANGEL comics are very much about the mythology of Wolfram and Hart's plans for the apocalypse and Angel.

In contrast, the BUFFY TV show was about what it was like to be clueless in high school and the ANGEL TV show was about Angel as the world's oldest college graduate (as Angel after nearly three centuries of life had accumulated quite the mastery of languages, history, theology, [magical] engineering and warfare but was deeply isolated). The BUFFY and ANGEL comics did not have the wide thematic resonance of a general audience TV show and that's going to rub certain audience members the wrong way because the priorities are very different.

Buffy in the TV show was a small-town vigilante; Buffy in the SEASON 8 comics was commanding a global army. The Buffyverse felt adjacent to our world on TV, but the comics were clearly a superhero(esque) universe.

The BUFFY and ANGEL comics were prone to the absurdities of superhero comic books and that can also alienate some of the audience. The (non-immortal) characters stopped aging, remaining a year or two older than their final TV appearances even as time moved forward. Los Angeles became a hell dimension for a season. Vampires became exposed to the general public with Harmony becoming a reality TV star. Angel became a celebrity supernatural investigator and had a movie made about him.

There's also stuff that could never have happened on TV within production limits and censor restrictions. Angel got a pet dragon (the one he tried to kill in the ANGEL finale until he realized the dragon was a benign creature under mind control) and named the dragon Cordelia. That's unaffordable for TV. Giles was killed off and resurrected as a pre-teen child which wouldn't have ever happened on TV because you'd alienate the actor. Angel moved Angel Investigations to London, England, also unaffordable for an LA production. Wesley returned as a ghost, but was permanently killed off after the first 17 issues of the IDW series, but I can't see that happening on TV without Alexis Denisoff wanting to leave. Angel had threeway sex with Kate Lockley and a lady werewolf (due to Illyria's telepathy going haywire). Buffy had sex with a woman a few times and Informant had a stroke over it. Dawn became a giant.

But there's also stuff that would have been inevitable had the TV shows continued. The epic scale of the Dark Horse BUFFY comics became, at least for me, unrelatably distant from reality by the end of SEASON 8. SEASON 8 ended with magic being (mostly) removed from Earth and the Slayer line 'ending' in that all the awakened Slayers would remain but going forward, there would only be one per generation once again instead of a global army. The Slayers collectively rejected Buffy and Buffy became a semi-normal woman working in a coffee shop who hunted vampires after hours.

In a text piece in the final SEASON 8 issue and in interviews, Whedon admitted that being the general of an army was not something many young women were dealing with in their lives and he'd taken Buffy too far from normalcy. Also, Fred came back to life. That was always in the cards.

SEASONS 9 - 10 were good (I haven't read 11 - 12 yet), but suffered from having lost the Sunnydale location. Because Whedon was overseeing the Dark Horse comics as the lead writer and working with a team of writers on each issue, there's a coherence and focus and a unified voice to the Dark Horse run that the IDW comics couldn't match.

The IDW run of ANGEL had an excellent opening arc of 17 issues with various spin-offs that showed how after ANGEL's finale, Wolfram and Hart had sent Los Angeles to hell, cut it off from the rest of the world and had Angel depowered and dealing with the fallout. Issues #18 - 44, however, were a very mixed bag. After the first story-arc, a new writer, Kelly Armstrong took over only to leave abruptly after five issues, leading to her plots being abruptly truncated and dismissed.

The subsequent writer, Bill Willingham, also left prematurely, due to his anger towards Dark Horse using the Angel character. His arcs were wrapped up by another writer in yet another confusing and muddled conclusion. The subsequent writers, David Tischman and Mariah Huehner, were also suddenly cut short by FOX relocating the ANGEL license to Dark Horse.

It's strange: the majority of these issues are actually fantastic! Angel becomes a public figure and adored as the hero who saved all of LA from hell. Angel starts working with the city to police the supernatural. Angel is kidnapped by a corporation seeking to sell immortality. Angel is sent to the future in which Wolfram and Hart rule the world. But each of these arcs ends with an incoherent concluding issue where the writer who originated these plots is suddenly out the door and a multi-issue finale is now one installment.

However, the IDW run did a finale YEARBOOK issue that offered some nice notes of closure to the run as a whole. Also, there were several SPIKE mini-serieses that were excellent. IDW's ANGEL #18 - 44 are regarded by many fans as non-canon because Whedon only worked on #1 - 17, but there's a lot in #18 - 44 that are worthwhile from Kate Lockley's role to Connor joining Angel Investigations. The ANGEL & FAITH comic has built on some of that, so it is bizarre to me that Whedon fans insist that the Dark Horse comics are ignoring them.

Most of the comics have some artistic difficulties at the outset. Every time a new artist starts drawing Angel, they seem to draw on publicity photos either from Season 1 when David Boreanaz was lean and trim and youthful or from Season 5 in which Boreanaz is heavily muscled and more weathered. After a few issues, the artist finds a midpoint where they draw Boreanaz at a midpoint -- in which case the publisher might as well stipulate that Angel is to be drawn as Boreanaz in Season 3 which is where the artists end up anyway.

Every once in awhile, there will be a cover or a page where an artist uses a reference photo that's from a different year than what's used for the rest of the issue. It's distracting. The likenesses for the other characters are generally consistent except that occasionally, artists accustomed to drawing well-endowed superheroines give Buffy, Faith and Willow the wrong proportions. Thankfully, Dawn and Fred have avoided this.

Anyway. There was a very devoted readership to the Dark Horse and IDW comics with a run that spanned from 2007 to 2018 and you don't get an ELEVEN YEAR run of comic books in this extremely meager publishing market without being extremely successful. Readers should, of course, form their own opinions and it is perfectly valid for Informant to say that the BUFFY and ANGEL comics weren't good, but the Buffyverse comics were a massive hit, a sales spectacular and sorely missed by their adoring readers.

The only reason SEASON 12 is the last one is because FOX decided to move the license from Dark Horse to a publisher called BOOM! (as FOX owns a share of the latter but nothing of the former). A new licensee generally cannot make use of material created by the previous licensee (although IDW and Dark Horse were gracious enough to do so), so BOOM! is doing a modern day comic book reboot of the property.

There is a certain hypocrasy in my protesting fans being obsessively pedantic, but one area of fandom that deeply annoys me -- the arguments over canonicity in spinoff materials. In this case, I'm referring to the BUFFY and ANGEL comics set after the shows ended their runs. For reasons too stupid to contemplate, comic book publisher Dark Horse only bothered to license BUFFY from FOX to do their SEASON 8 - 12 storylines. As a result, rival publisher IDW snapped up ANGEL. Joss Whedon wrote the initial issues of the BUFFY comics before having other writers come in to execute stories with his oversight.

With ANGEL -- well, they initially started with publishing stories that were set either during the run of the series or some unspecified time after, but then Whedon enjoyed the SPIKE: ASYLUM mini-series by writer Brian Lynch that he asked IDW to have Lynch script Whedon's plots for a comic book season of ANGEL. The first 17 issues were based on Whedon's outlines, at which point Whedon had to devote most of his attention to BUFFY and TV and film work and IDW's ANGEL line fell off his radar. IDW moved on and hired noted comic book writer Bill Willingham to take over ANGEL's monthly comic. The IDW line neither acknowledged nor contradicted the Dark Horse BUFFY comics.

But then a development arose: the villain of Dark Horse's BUFFY: SEASON 8 was revealed to be Angel. Fans were confused: how did this tie into the IDW ANGEL comics? Was Dark Horse ignoring IDW? As if to fan the flames, ANGEL writer Bill Willingham declared that he had never consulted with Whedon or Dark Horse, that he had no idea what was going on in their comics and he had no intention of coordinating with them whatsoever. Dark Horse fans started jeering that the IDW comics were not canon; IDW fans were hurt at their patronage being dismissed, BUFFY and ANGEL fans in general were very confused.

IDW editor Chris Ryall explained in an interview that Willingham had spoken without discussing the situation with his editors first. Ryall clarified: the ANGEL series was set immediately after Season 5 of ANGEL whereas the BUFFY comics were set several years after Season 5. Therefore, ANGEL's comics had plenty of time to catch up with the events of the Dark Horse comics. In addition, Ryall was certainly reading the Dark Horse comics and editing Willingham's material to avoid contradictions. When asked about canonicity, Ryall said he didn't see it that way: he was producing stories that explored ANGEL's concepts and characters, but he did note that characters who had appeared in pre-Whedon ANGEL comics had appeared in the 17 issues Whedon had overseen at Whedon's request.

The Dark Horse BUFFY comics later revealed that Angel had not become evil; he was pretending to be a villain to keep other villains away from Buffy and he made vague reference to the events of the IDW comics. In addition, Dark Horse granted IDW a special dispensation to use the character of Willow in an ANGEL comic storyline and Willow's guest-appearance reflected her SEASON 8 situation, a gesture to assure fans that IDW and Dark Horse were working together. Bill Willingham, however, was unapologetic for his behaviour and quit the ANGEL series in mid-storyline. Other writers finished his arcs.

Eventually, Dark Horse renegotiated with FOX and licensed ANGEL as well, conceding that their initial contracts had been shortsighted. IDW wrapped up their ANGEL arcs in a grand finale and Angel returned in Dark Horse's ANGEL AND FAITH series which made vague references to the events of the IDW series but wisely didn't tie itself too closely to those developments as those comics would potentially not stay in print. In addition, ANGEL & FAITH featured Angel in London, England -- the LA events weren't relevant to the specific stories at hand. Nothing in ANGEL & FAITH contradicted IDW.

Despite this -- the vast majority of BUFFY and ANGEL comic fans declare that the IDW stories are not canon and constantly attack the very good work in those stories as immaterial and unworthy. This despite the fact that IDW and Dark Horse coordinated their material, that Spike guest-starred in SEASON 8 reflecting his IDW characterization just as Willow reflected her Dark Horse characterization. Writer Brian Lynch is regularly mocked for featuring his original IDW characters in the Whedon-plotted IDW issues despite doing so at Whedon's request.

There has not  been a single point of contradiction between the ANGEL stories published by IDW and the BUFFY and ANGEL stories published by Dark Horse. And the motivation for this dismissal towards ANGEL's first post-show series is simply the cult of personality surrounding Joss Whedon and his lack of involvement with the latter-era IDW material has many readers arguing that it is automatically inferior. It's a really ugly side of fandom.

TITANS and SMALLVILLE have a very similar visual aesthetic of hyperstylized camerawork, hyperstylized dark lighting and as with SMALLVILLE, the TITANS cast are mostly in street clothes instead of ARROW and FLASH style costumes (although there are costumes). I think TITANS is a good show, and any problems with it are more due to the source material and the rights difficulties rather than the creators.

From what I can tell, TEEN TITANS was originally created because DC was hoping to package some of their underused/underselling copyrights into a bundle and hoped that Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, neither of whom they thought could sustain independent titles, might band together. From there came additions with Wonder Girl (added in their debut issue), Starfire, Cyborg, Raven and Beast Boy as it's helpful for a team book to have characters who aren't controlled by whoever's writing the Batman, Flash and Aquaman titles. The lineup eventually solidified with Dick Grayson, Wally West and Donna Troy as the core members.

TEEN TITANS came into its own when competing with the X-MEN comics in the 80s, but by the 90s, the 'teen' part of the property had eroded as the Batman titles had assigned the Robin role to Jason Todd and necessitated a new identity for Dick Grayson, Flash had aged Kid Flash into the actual Wally West and Wonder Girl had grown up too.

While some efforts were made to have new characters take over as the Teen Titans of TEEN TITANS, the original lineup inevitably reasserted itself and the comic dropped the TEEN from the title and featured Dick Grayson, Wally West and Donna Troy while a new title, YOUNG JUSTICE, featured Robin (Tim Drake), Impulse (Bart Allen), Superboy (Kon-El) and the new Wonder Girl (Cassandra Sandsmark) -- as well as Arrowette, Secret, Empress, L'il Lobo (don't ask) and Red Tornado -- again, because it helps the writer of the team book if he has some characters over whom he has full control without needing to check in with the Batman/Flash/Superman/Wonder Woman offices.

The point I'm making: TEEN TITANS was less about having a clear vision for a team book than slamming together some underused copyrights and hoping something publishable would emerge. The creative direction of focusing the comic on teenagers was lost over time. And as a TV show, TITANS is about having those copyrights together while clearly not having full access to other aspects of the DC properties and the results are... peculiar.

They're aiming the show at adults, so they've lost the teen aspect to begin with. They don't have access to the Wally West character. The lead character of TITANS on TV is Dick Grayson, a hard-boiled, cynical, isolated police detective who is trying to fight crime while leaving behind a vigilante past. Why is this character of a procedural bent being plugged into a world of alien visitors like Starfire, supernatural myths like Raven, paranormal beings like Beast Boy in addition to the street crime drama of Batman? I could ask the same of every other character on the show.

The rights situation also leads to some bizarre scenes such as depicting Dick Grayson's childhood with Bruce Wayne except Bruce Wayne is only ever seen at a distance or from behind and for some reason communicates with Dick through handwritten notes when they're LIVING IN THE SAME HOUSE. There's the science fiction technology of Starfire that's an awkward fit with revealing that an interstellar race was concerned with a supernatural threat on Earth. There's the street crime episodes of Dick's arc that's an awkward fit with the Raven/Trigon mythology.

Setting all that aside -- all the actors are highly compelling, they have great chemistry together and the series is gripping, dark, and well-written, but TEEN TITANS is a very odd comic book and TITANS' oddities reflect the source material's issues.