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2019-01-25 09:10:20

At this point, I would like to ask Slider_Quinn21 to step in and congratulate me on having turned yet another conversation back to SLIDERS even when SLIDERS had absolutely nothing to do with any of it at the outset. I mean, I know he previously identified the last high point as when I described THE WOLVERINE (2013) as a Season 5 situation where the original cast was gone and all that was left was the one guy defined by how he didn't fit in. ("Gotta say, I really respect ireactions' ability to turn every and any conversation back to SLIDERS," he remarked.) But I feel this is a new pinnacle of turning the exchange back to a middling-to-poor TV show of the 1990s.

2019-01-24 20:31:11

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?

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Two quick notes: I don't really understand what they're doing with Michael. Is he evil or is he not? Because after trying to defeat Michael the whole season, the idea of them just letting him be the hero at the end was really strange. I also don't really understand why Michael is evil in the Apocalypse World or what he was doing. Is there no Chuck in the other world? Did Michael kill Chuck? Because Chuck was around during the Michael/Lucifer fight in the main world, and he was actively working to help the brothers. We had that alternate apocalypse world in season 5, but that was based on Lucifer winning.

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

2019-01-24 17:51:06

I recently came across a dispatch regarding Season 3 of THE ORVILLE, a document that was written by Seth MacFarlane himself (in some parallel universe somewhere).

From: Seth MacFarlane
To: Alex Kurtzman
Re: CBS Purchasing Decision
Hey, Kurtzman! So excited for the Orville to join the TREK family! Here's my pitch for how we bring our boys and girls into the same room.
- Seth

Season 3, Episode 1: "Mixed and Mismatched"
Ed wakes up to find himself in a padded cell in a straitjacket. He breaks out of the jacket to find himself in a 24th century Starfleet uniform and is confused. Dr. Zimmerman (Robert Picardo) enters and addresses him as "Ensign Mercer" and asks if he's ready to begin. Exposition that follows: Ensign Mercer is a junior officer assigned to Starbase 47.
He was relieved of duty after turning up to duty in a homemade, non-Starfleet uniform and demanding to know where the Orville was. Ed protests and Dr. Zimmerman reveals: Ed's ancestor, Stewart Rivers (the character I played on ENTERPRISE) washed out of Starfleet and became an author. He wrote a series called THE ORVILLE with himself as the captain of a mid-level ship and Ed has now conflated reality with his great-great-great grandfather's writings.
Zimmerman tries to help Ed break out of his delusion and accept that he's not a daring leader or an adventurer, just a maintenance man at a research outpost. But as Ed peruses his ancestor's writings, Ed starts to have flashbacks to Season 1 episodes -- except the Orville is an Ambassador class ship, the transporter is present, everyone's in Starfleet uniforms and Klingons and Vulcans are present among his crew.
Ed escapes his holding cell and finds that Starbase 47 is a mismash of characters and technology from both THE ORVILLE and STAR TREK. The Starfleet Ed finds himself face to face with his Planetary Union counterpart who tries to kill him, shrieking it's one or the other of them. But Ed faces down this illusion and finally reaches the truth.
The real situation: in a recent adventure, the crew confiscated an illegal bioweapon. The weapon is a neurotoxin that was to be vented into a nearby sun. Due to a plumber's error, the toxin was shunted into Ed's shower, dousing him in a fluid that wipes memory on contact. Ed's brain has been erased.
Dr. Finn is trying to restore Ed's mind, but his real-life memories are becoming confused with the fictional works of Stewart Rivers' ORVILLE books, a series so popular that Ed's ship was named after Rivers' creation. Thanks to some cleverness from Isaac, Ed's memories are restored and he takes a day or two to recover from his ordeal.
When alone in his quarters, however, Ed records a personal log and we learn what Ed has withheld from everyone. Ed's real memories have become inextricably merged with the fictionalized version. Ed remembers his whole life, but he remembers it taking place in the universe of THE ORVILLE.
Ed then says he's sure he can still be a Starfleet officer, still captain his crew. "I can do this," he intones to himself. "I can do this." And a moment later, "Computer, delete last entry."
As the season progresses, Ed's lack of familiarity with Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans and the transporter will become a problem. If we need flashbacks, we either use the original footage and indicate that we're seeing the version in Ed's memories or we reshoot the scenes with everyone in Starfleet apparel. The Orville will need to be redesigned. All the aliens we introduced in Seasons 1 - 2 exist as separate species in the TREK universe; let's not indicate the Krill are Klingons or anything. The personalities and backstories of each character are unchanged.
Whadja think, Alex?

From: Alex Kurtzman
To: Seth MacFarlane
Re: CBS Purchasing Decision
Seth, when CBS bought THE ORVILLE, it wasn't to integrate your wannabe series with real TREK shows; it was just to air it on All Access since FOX had already paid to make it. I wouldn't want your TNG knockoff if it came with a cure for cancer and a director's cut of STAR TREK V.
Please take your ORVILLE premiere pitch (and your lame-ass copy of "In the Pale Moonlight"'s ending) and shove it up your ass.
Sincerely yours,
Alex

2019-01-23 15:30:14

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I agree with all that too.
(Side note: I actually had an Orville post going about how it was the spiritual successor to Sliders on FOX, but I figured that was such a niche thought that it wouldn't make sense to convert it to an Orville thread. I actually think it belongs in here, frankly.)
What I like about the Orville is that it feels like a real "job" and a real "workplace." Like in TNG, there doesn't seem to be any idea of money. Gordon doesn't find himself unable to keep up with his best friend Ed because Ed makes more money than him, but other than that, there's aspects that make it feel real and relateable. There's the episode where Bortis has a holodeck addiction, essentially, and he asks to leave work early so many times that he has to offer to make up a shift after hours. Captain Mercer asks to leave his shift early so he can go on a date. They have the same kind of bar like Ten Forward, but people are meeting on awkward first dates and drinking with their buddies. There's a school on the ship where kids get into realistic mischief.
The Orville is definitely a TNG parody/clone, but it takes itself seriously. It feels real, and it has a certain charm to it.
I do wonder what would happen if Trek approached MacFarlane and tried to make Season 3, "Star Trek: Orville" - I know it would never ever happen because of licensing and because the show doesn't really represent the kind of ideals that Trek goes for....but if they did, I wonder if MacFarlane would be okay "becoming legitimate"

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.

2019-01-22 20:52:37

TemporalFlux wrote:

With regard to the Lincoln Memorial incident, I’m reminded of an old Mark Twain quote:
“Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”
It started with the Black Israelites (so named because they wear black garb) who were trying to incite everyone at the event by throwing insults at everyone they saw. The kids in the MAGA hats responded to them by starting a school chant to try to drown out the Black Israelites (the chant becoming so animated that one kid jumping up and down took his shirt off). Native American Nathan Phillips then began beating his drum in response to the kids’ chants; and the kids continued their chant adding tomahawk chop motions in response (much like you often saw at Braves baseball games). Phillips then walked into the group of kids and started beating his drum within inches of the face of one of the kids - an aggressive movement.
In my opinion, they all looked like fools.

I still can't find the will to watch the footage, but TF made me think of this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YClAMYTEuZ0

2019-01-22 19:46:56

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:

It makes me think back to TNG and how in so many situations, every crew member acted like a perfect example of humanity in the future. They all did their duty, never complained about their shifts or officers, always had a complete understanding of the technical puzzles or problems that cropped up, etc. the Orville gang feel like people I could know right now.
For example, I thought about it. If I was on a ship, responsible for flying through space, for an 8 hour shift, I would defiantly want a soda. Maybe a bag of jerky too. And why NOT do some bingeing of a favorite sitcom or show as well? The little things they throw in like that make me feel like it's TNG with a group of people plucked from our present. I love that!
Fourth, they aren't afraid to do real sci fi type topics, just like TNG would. They do shows that metaphorically comment on current issues in our world. It makes for an enjoyable hour of TV. Much more than if it had been all dick and fart jokes and fourth wall breaking jokes.

2019-01-22 16:56:47

Slider_Quinn21 will not stop talking about THE ORVILLE, so I am going to watch it specifically and only because he keeps bringing it up. :-D

2019-01-22 16:32:03

pilight wrote:

When you pay money to attend a school that allows and even celebrates students wearing blackface to intimidate minority students from other schools, you're going to develop that reputation.

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 wrote:

You have issues. Seriously, if this is your gut reaction to any story that you know your masters want you to disagree with, you need deprogramming. You've been trained like a lab rat to not go for the cheese.
For the record, I don't side with whoever is white. I don't care who is white. I side with a ton of black people, but they're all of the race traitors that your side is allowed to use slurs against, so they don't really count. I side with a lot of gay people, but they're all the self-hating traitors who your side is allowed to spit on. I side with a lot of strong, amazing women, but they're all the mindless little whores that your side is allowed to threaten to rape. Hell, I follow and even respect some self-professed liberals, with whom I probably agree on very little... But they're all the alt-right extremists that your side is allowed to threaten with violence, but is most certainly never EVER allowed to actually listen to.
This reaction of yours just once again proves that it never mattered what I actually said to you in any of these conversations. You just talk to the version of me that the media has told you to believe in. You're in a cult, dude. And this isn't about what you believe, it's about what you've been trained not to hear. I've never said a racist word in my life, so how did that reaction end up in your head?

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.

2019-01-21 21:32:14

Sooooooo... I have not seen the footage. This is the sort of story I just don’t have the mental bandwidth to engage with right now and I have no opinion. Nevertheless, reading Informant’s post, I had two separate reactions. My first reaction was thinking that OF COURSE Informant would take the side of whoever was white. (Sorry.)

Informant would say he's siding with Facts and if he is, then he may well be right at which point my second thought was: THANK GOD I didn’t weigh in on this situation (and still haven’t) because if I’d gotten it wrong, I’d never hear the end of it from Informant.

2019-01-20 15:26:12

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

I liked the premiere too, but I don't understand the uniforms. Is the Enterprise the only ship that is using the new uniforms? Why does Pike go back to the "old" uniform by the end?

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.

2019-01-20 00:01:22

Hmmm, yes.

To switch gears — one of my favourite TV shows is ALIEN SURF GIRLS, a 26 episode Australian teen drama with a captivating concept. It’s about two aliens from a distant planet, Lumina, who are discorporate beings of energy and visit Earth for a school project in secret. They’re only coming to research the Earth’s electromagnetic and gravitational properties. Adopting human form as two teenaged girls, Zoe and Kiki pass through the small coastal town of Lightning Point. They see the beach, the crashing waves and stunning horizon and athletic exhillaration of surfing and they fall completely in love with water.

ALIEN SURF GIRLS is one of the worst television shows I’ve ever seen. The title is inane. The characterization is nonsensical with the scripts confused as to whether Zoe and Kiki are similar to humans or energy beings in human-shaped shells. The plot that gets them stranded on Earth involves a dog biting the card-shaped key to their spaceship. Each week, some random piece of technology (a microwave, a radio) causes Zoe or Kiki to lose human form which is played as some massive threat when it’s at times indicated to be their natural state. There is no conflict, no drama, no rising stakes, no explanation for why the girls are desperate to get home, no consequence if they remain on Earth — it’s terrible.

But... I just really like the concept of two scientifically minded aliens visiting Earth on a disinterested mission of dispassionate study only to see water and fall head over heels in love with surfing. An idea like that deserves a better story.

2019-01-19 16:14:11

ireactions wrote:

Hey, Slider_Quinn21 -- since you've seen FALLOUT now -- what do you think of seeing Ethan Hunt in this movie as an image of what Quinn Mallory would be in his forties? Posts below:
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7578#p7578
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7645#p7645

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Ha, I'll be honest, I didn't see it. But I feel like you see things through some really unique eyes, especially when it comes to seeing Sliders in everything.
That being said, I think if I force myself to think about it, it does have a certain truth to it. Quinn and Ethan are both leaders of a team that has operated successfully for a very long time despite very low odds of success. They're both comfortable in situations where they're clearly in over their heads, and they seem to thrive on unpredictable and dangerous situations.

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.

2019-01-19 15:55:22

Well, I enjoyed DISCOVERY's Season 2 premiere. It's curious how Season 1 was so divorced from THE ORIGINAL SERIES in production design and mythology and now they're attempting to dovetail with it. It shows a very different hand at the helm -- except it also doesn't because Gretchen Berg and Aaron Harberts hadn't been fired when this premiere was written and filmed; it was only with Episode 6 that Kurtzman was fully in control -- although he did direct this episode and may or may not have engaged in re-edits and reshoots. I'm starting to wonder if every season of DISCOVERY will start with the showrunner's departure after the first few episodes.

2019-01-18 16:33:15

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?

2019-01-18 14:34:29

I made mini hamburgers for lunch today following a White Castle-esque recipe. I actually do order mini hamburgers in restaurants sometimes so that I can hear someone's voice saying, "Sliders." I've always joked that SLIDERS should be revived with Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo running a hamburger joint that specializes in miniature burgers.

2019-01-17 23:49:59

Informant wrote:

The thing that struck me was, whoever was making the decisions about Ghostbusters heard the audience, respected the audience, and adjusted the plan accordingly. Meanwhile, I've spent a lot of time recently hearing about studios/producers/directors/actors not only ignoring the fans of franchises like Star Trek and Star Wars, but insulting them or attacking them. It's so against the spirit that built these fandoms.
I'm not saying that Kurtzman doesn't have talent as a writer. I just don't think that any decision surrounding Star Trek has been a good one for a long time now. I think they need to stop what they're doing, step back, and start over, the same way Ghostbusters has. If CBS is getting super awesome numbers with Discovery (which we have no way of knowing), then I'm wrong and they should just keep going while I walk away. But if they're not seeing a big response from viewers, it's not the audience that is broken.

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.

2019-01-17 18:30:32

My machine allows me to brew 16 ounces, but I see what's going on here. Because, pre-wirecutting, the Keurig 2.0 didn't accept common refillable pods, I bought the official Keurig My K-Cup Universal Reusable Filter ( https://www.keurig.ca/accessories/my-k- … sal-filter ). This reusable pod has about twice the height of a standard coffee pod and when you insert it into the pod basket, it lowers the latch and retracts needle (which a normal-sized pod won't do). The Keurig 2.0 detects that a larger-than-normal pod has been inserted and unlocks the 16 ounce option.

I bought four of the standard size, non-Keurig brand refillable pods today and put one in. These pods aren't long enough to trigger the latch and retract the needle, so the machine detects a normal size pod and limits you to 10 ounces. However, I tried putting the official pod in but without the lid, instead dropping in the smaller pod into the larger pod casing. This unlocked the 16 ounce brew option as well.

Anyway. If you've got a magnet in there doing the same thing as the larger pod, I think you're fine. As for me -- even my largest travel mug can only hold 10 ounces of coffee with enough space left for cream.

2019-01-17 16:33:20

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.

2019-01-16 23:28:29

I’ve read some reports that the magnet can damage the internal carafe sensor, so I decided to hold off. I did disassemble the upper lid on the K400 and found the two wires that, if looped together, tricks the machine into thinking that a carafe is present. However, I didn’t have a wire stripper on hand.

I also don’t buy pod-packed coffee, only reusable pods, and I’ve yet to find a locally sold carafe-sized pod. The official reusable k-cup only brews 12 ounces of coffee at the most. And the only locked function in the menu that I see is for brewing carafes. Also, the Keurig 2.0 carafe is an insane $40 and buying one reusable coffee pod for $20 was already pushing it.

I think, now that the machine is unlocked, I’ll buy the four-pack of refillable coffee pods for $15 and if I need to make coffee for guests, I’ll pre-load those pods and load them in one after another.

2019-01-16 21:18:10

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?

2019-01-16 18:38:42

I recently re-read all the post-show BUFFY and ANGEL comics from Dark Horse and IDW. On the whole, they were quite good with some tremendous ups and a few startling lows. They offered a nice continuation in a different medium that originated from two shows that ended just fine as they were. However, they left me with the impression that Whedon doesn't give a crap about ANGEL as a series.

Any Buffyverse comic reader should start with the ANGEL comics from IDW which are set before the BUFFY comics. ANGEL: AFTER THE FALL does a great job of following up on the Season 5 ending with Los Angeles and Angel Investigations plunged into hell. It's a great situation that brings Wesley back as an unwilling liaison between Wolfram & Hart and Angel.

The LA in hell setting feels like a new status quo to the point where the inevitable reversal is a little disappointing. The first 17 issues of the ANGEL series are a great success, but what follows is a mixed bag between three different writing teams with every different dialogue styles. Joss Whedon was not supervising IDW's output and the stories are somewhat schizophrenic, although the conclusion with #44 and the YEARBOOK is actually quite satisfying. A wobbly flight that sticks the landing.

BUFFY: SEASON 8 is from Dark Horse and completely under Whedon's supervision (with multiple writers executing his direction). It starts out beautifully. The global adventures of Buffy and her army of Slayers are splendid and full of Whedon's trademark humour and darkness. However, around the 3/4 mark, when the Slayers start unleashing Indian gods and Buffy and Angel are having orbital sex and procreating new universes, the epic scale starts to muddle the characterization. Angel is possessed by a parallel universe and kills Giles, a moment that's so unclear and confused that it doesn't land at all.

From this awkward conclusion, however, a great status quo is set up for SEASON 9. We have the BUFFY series where Buffy is trying to rebuild her new life in disgrace and failure while coping with how due to the cataclysm of Season 8, all magic is gone from reality. It's a grounded, back to basics season with some excellent character arcs. The real standout, however, is ANGEL AND FAITH, in which Angel seeks to redeem himself for Giles' death by completing every pursuit and mission that Giles ever left unfinished.

The arc of Angel and Faith tracing Giles' path through life is beautiful for both characters. Writer Christos Gage gives vivid definition to their sweet and platonic friendship that was hinted at on TV but never fully realized due to Eliza Dushku being a guest-star. Gage's snappy dialogue and masterful control of pacing and tone leads to a spectacular conclusion. He seemed to out-Whedon Whedon in converting Whedon's chatty, conversational writing into the comic book format and do so far better than any other writer in SEASON 8.

As a result, Whedon moved Gage off ANGEL AND FAITH to write the main BUFFY series in SEASON 10 and Gage brings the same excellence to BUFFY with the gang restoring magic to Earth but now struggling to work out all the new rules.

Unfortunately, ANGEL AND FAITH suffers in SEASON 10 from losing Gage. Gage's successor, Victor Gischler, doesn't write like Gage and also doesn't write like Whedon. Gischler's dialogue is subtle and minimal where Gage and Whedon are bombastic. Gischler's pacing is slow and deliberate where Gage and Whedon are driven and speedy. Gischler's humour is low-key and thoughtful where Gage and Whedon go for belly laughs.

It's weird: ANGEL AND FAITH (S9) was illustrated by Rebekah Issacs who created more cartoony approximations of Angel and Faith, but her body language and Gage's dialogue made them seem so much themselves that it didn't matter. ANGEL AND FAITH (S10) is drawn by Will Conrad who has a very photorealistic approach to likenesses, and yet, these note-perfect renderings of Angel and Faith feel like comic book approximations. Gischler is a subtle writer and Whedon's style and characters weren't built for subtlety. Gischler is a good writer, but he's the wrong writer for this book.

SEASON 8's 40 issues of BUFFY had numerous writers, but on every issue, Joss Whedon was credited as "Executive Producer." Even though Whedon didn't write all 40 scripts, all 40 issues feel like they're by the same team of voices if not a single voice. Whedon was rewriting and polishing all the scripts for SEASON 8 and SEASON 9. In contrast, SEASON 10's ANGEL AND FAITH has nothing of Whedon's voice despite the same Executive Producer credit.

Gischler revealed in an interview that he had no contact with Whedon for SEASON 10, only editors who'd spoken with Whedon. It looks to me like Whedon, busy with AGE OF ULTRON at the time, had been about as involved with ANGEL AND FAITH as he was with AGENTS OF SHIELD (barely if at all) and he either devoted his time to editing BUFFY or BUFFY as written by Gage didn't even need Whedon.

SEASON 11 is another year where Whedon's involvement seems low; Christos Gage wrote a 12 issue BUFFY arc where supernatural beings are being rounded up into camps. Over in ANGEL (without Faith), Angel and Illyria/Fred were sent into a time travel adventure; their 12 issues would not interact with the BUFFY situation at all. The BUFFY storyline was relevant, tense, taut and Gage's excellence shined with or without Whedon who didn't seem to promote this run of comics much.

In contrast, ANGEL in SEASON 11 as written by Corinna Behko had none of the TV show's quick wit or humour and the time travel storyline had Angel and Illyria visiting points in their history and avoiding any time-altering behaviour -- which led to the story-arc being a meandering, pointless affair. The tail-end of this 12 issue arc led to Angel revisiting the night he became a vampire and murdered his father and sister, but putting this emotional situation at the end left no space to fully explore it.

There was also a romance between Angel and Illyria/Fred that could have been a fascinating exploration of ANGEL's polyamorous nature (already established on TV with Darla and Drusilla) -- but compressed to an issue and a half, it was sudden, unearned and underdeveloped.

In interviews, Behko said that she received instructions to sideline the Angel character from BUFFY's stories through a time travel plot and that she worked primarily with her editor to devise arcs based on this mandate-- which indicates at least to me that Whedon had next to nothing to do with the SEASON 11 ANGEL series.

Looking back, Whedon has often seemed distant from ANGEL. In Seasons 1 -- 3, producer David Greenwalt ran the show and Whedon was more focused on BUFFY. In Season 4, Greenwalt moved on and Tim Minear took over as showrunner as Whedon's attention was on FIREFLY. With Season 5, Jeffrey Bell was showrunner.

I get the sense Whedon wasn't involved with ANGEL on a day to day basis. Despite promoting the Season 5 finale, Whedon didn't even fully write the ANGEL series finale or direct it, leaving both to Jeffrey Bell. Actor Vincent Kartheiser (Connor) said that he barely saw Whedon on set during Kartheiser's time in Season 4.

Whedon had perpetually stepped back from ANGEL, letting Greenwalt, Minear, Bell and Boreanaz control the character and series. With the ANGEL comics, Whedon was hands-off again. He gave direction for BUFFY; he gave none to ANGEL aside from taking away the best writer ANGEL ever had and moving him to BUFFY.

This has me thinking that while Whedon created and understands the Angel character, he doesn't have a strong sense of the ANGEL series. This is reflected in how the theme in Season 1 of helping individual guest-stars fell away in Season 2 as newcomer Tim Minear pushed for more of a myth-arc focused on the regular cast. This is seen in Season 4 when Angel went from a moody twentysomething to a gregarious team dad or in Season 5 when he ran a law firm.

None of these directions are wrong; they just reflect how Whedon himself didn't seem committed to any particular route. In SEASON 10, the ANGEL comic was blandly professional but lacking the strong individuality Gage brought to the title. SEASON 11's ANGEL comic was written to keep the character present in publishing but absent from BUFFY's arcs with global implications.

And for SEASON 12, there is no ANGEL series at all, only four issues of BUFFY published just before Dark Horse lost the BUFFY license. This is the finale. Christos Gage is credited with the scripts; he and Whedon share credit for the story. Whedon communicated in interviews that he was a co-writer on this one and Gage confirmed that he and Joss would agree on a plot, Gage would write the script and Whedon would revise it before it went to the artist.

SEASON 12 folds Angel back into the BUFFY cast as a supporting character. And this finale series is a great piece of work, putting a lovely bow on both the ANGEL and BUFFY saga and confronting the dark future that was shown in the FRAY mini-series which foretells death and destruction for Buffy and all her friends.

Angel has a beautiful S12 moment where Buffy, Angel and friends travel to the future and learn how the final battle between Slayers and demons played out. The future records that all Slayers lose their powers and Buffy sacrifices herself driving all demons off Earth and into hell. This leads to the future in FRAY where Slayers have been gone for centuries and what demons are present are too weak to be any serious threat. Buffy accepts her fate, but Angel refuses to play along with how history is written, declaring that he intends to fight the battle, defeat the demons *and* save the Slayers. He's spent most of his life being told to follow his destiny and all it ever did was make him realize the value of free will.

Gage and Whedon co-wrote these issues, so I'm not sure who's responsible for what, but Angel truly came alive again as a warrior surrounded by adult children, his taciturn pseudo-militarism a delightful contrast to the goofiness of Buffy, Xander, Willow, Dawn and Spike. It either confirms how vital Gage was to ANGEL -- or it suggests that Whedon fully grasps how to write Angel as a supporting character but can't wrap his head around Angel as a leading man.

It's sad that the BUFFY comic got veteran Buffyverse writers while the ANGEL comic seemed to get less experienced talent. The BUFFY title got Whedon himself and he brought in BUFFY TV staffers Drew Goddard, Drew Greenberg, Steven S. DeKnight, Jane Espenson and top comic talent like Jim Kreuger, Brad Meltzer and Brian K. Vaughan and then Andrew Chambliss (who went on to run ONCE UPON A TIME).

However, with ANGEL, Whedon selected Brian Lynch to write the IDW series because Whedon had read and enjoyed Lynch's SPIKE comics as opposed to anything specific to ANGEL. For SEASON 9, it was Dark Horse editor Scott Allie who selected Christos Gage, a Marvel Comics writer with no Buffyverse experience, to write ANGEL. When Gage proved successful, Whedon moved Gage to writing BUFFY for SEASONS 10 -- 12, a promotion that made it seem like Whedon didn't consider ANGEL worthy of Gage's time and talent -- or maybe Whedon didn't really understand ANGEL well enough to make decisions for its benefit.

2019-01-16 18:37:59

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."

2019-01-16 18:36:04

Informant wrote:

I didn't read the Countdown series. How did it display Kurtzman's fandom? Because I have never seen it on screen. Data using B4's body to come back was pretty much implied at the end of Nemesis, when B4 starts to sing the song that Data had been singing earlier.

The COUNTDOWN comic resulted from fans asking Kurtzman how the TNG cast would factor into STAR TREK (2009); Kurtzman's response was to produce the COUNTDOWN comic in which Picard, Data, Spock and LaForge try to save Romulus -- and even as I type this, I realize that it doesn't matter because ultimately, you don't think Kurtzman is a fan and I respect that. I just think that a guy who passed out photocopied pages of Diane Duane's SPOCK's WORLD novel to Zachary Quinto and Ben Cross on the set of STAR TREK (2009) is clearly a fan of something.

Perhaps Kurtzman is just not a fan by Informant's standards. Kurtzman is more a fan of THE ORIGINAL SERIES and the first six movies than anything else.

I think that Kurtzman, as a TV producer, has a view of what is meaningful difference and diversity and DS9 and VOYAGER are not it. In the podcast, Kurtzman emphasizes that DS9 and VOY were "very different," so I'm thinking that from a marketing standpoint, both DS9 and VOY indicated that STAR TREK was a show about a crew in space. In contrast, Kurtzman's LOWER DECKS series is going to be an animated sitcom that's more BROOKLYN NINE NINE than DISCOVERY.

If the new Picard series has even a slight resemblance to TNG, it'll be nothing like DISCOVERY. Under Kurtzman, TNG-2.0 is (possibly) going to be about a retired old man trying to gracefully accept that he's been unretired and that we need him back. (Stewart reportedly reviewed Kurtzman's story ideas and told him, "I love it all. We will do none of this.") DSC2 is going to be a post-war space adventure.

Kurtzman talks a bit in the podcast about how he started working on DISCOVERY after directing the train crash that was THE MUMMY. Humiliated and depressed, he accepted a role as DISCOVERY producer. However, he feared his black mood infecting the production and benched himself from writing and directing. He restricted himself to working on post production. From the edit bay, he watched Burnham gradually recovering from her depression and felt hope for himself and watching the show was helping him recover.

In Season 2, he took a small step out of the edit bay, directing the Season 2 premiere -- shortly after which CBC fired Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg for abusive behaviour in the writers' room. Kurtzman realized he had been so unhappy during Season 1 that he'd failed to notice how equally unhappy his writers were. He took point on DISCOVERY as showrunner and later called Patrick Stewart's agent about a new NEXT GENERATION show. I don't think he loves STAR TREK the way Informant does, but I think it's safe to say that across six TV shows and 13 films, there is no one way to love TREK.

2019-01-15 18:03:02

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.

2019-01-15 15:32:16

I think Kurtzman is right. I agree that from a writing standpoint, DS9 and VOYAGER were *about* different things. But in terms of scripting, both shows featured characters speaking in extremely formal, structured, corporate vocabularies with a very uniform approach to conversation. Both shows featured interstellar combat with the same style of steady, deliberate model work, people standing on the bridge reporting on what’s happening outside with and with slight forays into CGI. Both shows featured gunfights with a very similar fight choreography of people moving walking slowly between action sequences and holding still to fire phasers and then walking slowly to the next point of cover. For the longest time, both shows had most the cast wearing the same style uniforms.

Given that VOYAGER was set so distantly from DS9 and featured a ragtag crew of Marquis and Starfleet who would likely never see home again, VOYAGER should have been much more informal and more like FIREFLY or BATTLESTAR GALACTICA than DS9. Which is probably why Ronald D. Moore quit VOYAGER to make BSG.

Both shows were spinning out of THE NEXT GENERATION and extending the visual aesthetic of their parent show. Whatever DISCOVERY’s faults, it isn’t scripted, shot, lit, edited or designed to look like STAR TREK (2009). And Kurtzman is a fan; nobody obsessively reads STAR TREK novels and provides the plot for the COUNTDOWN comic to resurrect Data in B4’s body without being a fan. He’s just been, I think, quoted without the nuance needed to deliver his point.

2019-01-11 14:11:42

Longtime members of the SLIDERS community know that in the past, I experienced blackout rages over certain situations. At a crisis point of rage, the moderator banned me from this board for a period of time saying I needed a break. I expressed my grief over this to Matt Hutaff who was his usual unsympathetic self, snapping, “YOU are the moderator; you banned YOURSELF!” But it was good, it gave me some time to get my brain in order and no longer have such outbursts, except I had one recently over Temporal Flux.

I posted in a Facebook group a link to my David Peckinpah essay. One response was from someone I shall name Frederico Herrera. He said that he found Temporal Flux's behind the scenes info untrustworthy, saying TF's information about John not getting along with the writers and Kari not getting along with Kari was so anecdotal that TF couldn't possibly have found out any of it. Frederico Herrera added that there was no way TF could know that "Easy Slider" was sold to Peckinpah based on Peckinpah's obsession with motorcycles because there was no proof that Peckinpah was the showrunner for Season 5 and that the only trustworthy source for SLIDERS information was EarthPrime.com and proceeded to call me "a fucking idiot" for trusting TF who could be anybody.

As someone who spent a lot of time converting the Sci-Fi Channel's press clippings into EarthPrime.com content and as someone who has always treasured TF as the kind, avuncular older friend I needed when I was a kid, Frederico Herrera had made me absolutely furious. I admit I don't know how TF landed most of his scoops, only some, but Matt has talked to several producers and writers from Seasons 1 - 5 and I've talked to Torme and Robert Floyd. The only informational point of disagreement EP.COM has ever had with TF is on whether or not "Net Worth" was initially meant for Season 3 and TF ended up being right on that one. Regardless of the conflicts between the EP.COM team and Temporal Flux, we have all at one time or another described TF as the de-facto expert on SLIDERS.

Frederico Herrera's attack on TF enraged me and I proceeded to engage in a campaign of vengeful retribution. Which is to say I posted a link to the Sci-Fi Channel press clippings, describing some of the interviews and then noted, "It's pretty funny that Frederico Herrera calls Temporal Flux a liar for sharing the Kari/Sabrina conflict and directs everyone to EP.COM for the real story. EP.COM has two interviews I personally added to the site where Kari describes the feud."

I later posted a link to TF's Ultimate FAQ on SLIDERS and remarked, "I know Frederico Herrera will call TF a fraud and a sham and say his FAQ is bogus, but I refer to the FAQ constantly when working on EP.COM to see if any of our scoops were actually found first by TF and he's often beaten us to lots of things."

I posted a link to the original pitch for "Easy Slider" and remarked, "It's pretty funny that Frederico Herrera calls TF a liar who can't possibly prove that David Peckinpah had control of SLIDERS in Season 5 and advises everyone to check out EP.COM for the real truth instead. EP.COM has notes on this story from Peckinpah's assistant who explains that Peckinpah bought this Season 5 pitch because it involved motorcycles which was one of his obsessions."

I posted a link to Tracy Torme's 2000 interview on EP.COM and added, "It's pretty funny that Frederico Herrera calls TF a liar for saying Conrad Bennish Jr. was planned to return in Season 5 and advises people go to EP.COM instead for real behind the scenes info. EP.COM has an interview with Torme confirming that Jason Gaffney was booked to return for Season 5."

I later posted a link to "Slide Effects," the story Tracy Torme conceived to resurrect the original cast in one episode which I wrote into a script and then commented, "I hope all of you enjoy it and I'm sure Frederico Herrera will call me a liar for putting Torme's name on this story and urge everyone to go to EP.COM for the real truth which would be great since EP.COM has the interview where Torme described the plot of this script."

I later posted a link to the Robert Floyd interview, describing how Floyd first appeared on this very forum and then noted, "I'm sure Frederico Herrera will call Floyd a liar since I think Frederico Herrera considers anyone who knows something he doesn't to be a liar."

I later shared the story of how I had seemingly damaged my DVD of "The Guardian" from the COMPLETE SERIES set and bought a Season 3 box set only to find the damaged DVD just needed a good cleaning, and how I'd offered the Season 3 box set to anybody but there'd been no takers and that perhaps giving anyone a Season 3 box set was akin to a hate crime and a physical assault and would Frederico Herrera like to have it?

I later posted a link to Slidecage's review of the Season 3 box set and said I would like to give away my Season 3 box set and that surely Frederico Herrera deserved first dibs on it.

I later posted a link to the aborted SLIDERS 2013 pilot script and talked about how much I enjoyed working on it and how, despite not working out, I was happy to have fostered my friendship with Slider_Quinn21 and Informant during that time and that I still enjoy reading it now and then and that I'm sure Frederico Herrera couldn't possibly understand because Frederico Herrera struck me as someone who only wanted to be around people he considered stupider than himself and therefore probably couldn't make friends.

I later posted a link to the "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition" script and talked about how much fun that was to write and then said Frederico Herrera probably couldn't appreciate it because he struck me as someone who was incapable of loving anyone or anything.

Eventually, Frederico Herrera posted in the Facebook group. "I have been tagged with at least TEN NOTIFICATIONS today," he wrote. "Nobody needs this on Christmas Day! If you want to keep posting links to EarthPrime, LEAVE ME OUT OF IT!"

The moderator placidly informed me that the war was over and to stop posting every other hour and to stop mentioning Frederico Herrera in Facebook posts for no good reason whatsoever and I agreed.

I feel we have all learned something from this incident. Specifically, we have learned that despite the issues Temporal Flux and Matt Hutaff have with each other, Matt has obviously been very respectful when speaking of Temporal Flux during our many years of conversations. We have learned this because insulting TF apparently drives me into absurd fits of rage (that are hilariously stupid and ineffective) that Matt has never had to experience.

2019-01-09 16:58:39

I definitely think SLIDERS REBORN is ultimately mine. MATT HUTAFF's SLIDERS REBORN and NIGEL MITCHELL's SLIDERS REBORN would've been very different.

**
The George Lucas collaboration with his friends Spielberg, Coppola, the Hyucks and his wife is fascinating to me because you can compare those results to Lucas working alone. Another fascinating but never quite documented collaboration: William Shatner's STAR TREK novels in which he wrote plot outlines featuring Captain Kirk in the 24th century, co-writers and veteran TREK novelists Garfield and Judith Reeves-Stevens would write the prose, and then Shatner would revise the draft and rewrite all of Kirk's dialogue.

The combination was beautiful: you had a husband-wife team with an encyclopedic knowledge of TREK and an obsessive love for all the shows and movies and the ability to write vivid pastiches of every character. And then you had the lead actor himself presenting a prose version of his own performance and working with two brilliant SF writers to bring his scenes and concepts to life.

The prose read entirely like the Reeves-Stevens' previous TREK novels, but they were keen in interviews to declare that these Kirk books were not stories they would or could write themselves. They also refused to reveal which ideas and words were theirs and which were Shatner's, saying all three had agreed on the ideas and words that were published regardless of who suggested them.

There were insights into Kirk that felt very much like they came from the actor who had played him for decades. Why was a maverick, rogue, rebellious personality like Kirk working for what was essentially the military?

How would Kirk feel about the corporate structure of the NEXT GEN ships? What would Kirk do if he were to retire happily? How would he deal with truly becoming a senior citizen? What would Kirk be like as a husband? As a parent? What would a Kirk-Picard friendship actually be like? The answers felt true. Shatner understood the lead character, the Reeves-Stevens team understood the vast universe around the character and the combination was everything Shatner's STAR TREK V wasn't.

**

MATT HUTAFF's SLIDERS REBORN would have been a reboot in which older versions of the sliders discover sliding at their present day ages instead of in 1994 with the explanation that in 2001, a restored Quinn had to "kill" sliding in order to end the Kromagg threat. I really like it as a reboot concept and found it hilarious that with the exception of matching previous continuity, it's the same concept Temporal Flux offered for a future reboot with the original actors. I find Matt doesn't think like a fan; he thinks like a TV producer, and this will serve him professionally but wasn't where I wanted to go for fan fiction.

Nigel felt my outlines were too dense and that the results would be unreadably long and he eventually disengaged from the material (while still continuing to review scripts). And this is because Nigel is a novelist. He is not a screenwriter. He doesn't think in terms of film and TV being the edited highlights. Nigel thinks in prose. He didn't grasp why I was outlining events that would take place "off camera."

NIGEL MITCHELL's SLIDERS REBORN would have been a series of novels. And the final SLIDERS REBORN novel in Nigel series, I imagine, would have been more like an anthology in which each of the four characters gets a novella with their individual plot.

And Slider_Quinn21 -- I actually don't know what his SLIDERS REBORN would've been. Certainly, I appreciated his contributions. He spotted typos, he pointed areas where the exposition was confusing or absent, he noted when characters changed the topic of conversation without a transition. I think, because I was sending Slider_Quinn21 script pages instead of outlines, he was less inclined to change the story and more interested in making it as readable and understandable as possible.

Working on the first three scripts and the novella had been very taxing and draining and exhausting. Matt and Nigel made it manageable by helping me find solutions even if they likely never understood how much they helped as they probably only recall telling me something didn't work and why and offering me solutions they knew I didn't want. I think they didn't understand that identifying problems was extremely helpful even if I'd make my own solutions.

Nobody worked with me on the fifth script in which I wanted Quinn to meet Mallory. The convolutions to justify the tangled knots to bring Jerry O'Connell and Robert Floyd in the same room were absurd and I ended up rewatching "Obsession" and choosing a psychic from a single scene to be the antagonist of this script to rationalize an otherwise nonsensical plot. Tellingly, the fifth script is one where Mallory is really a hallucination and it's really a conversation between Quinn and himself, which is probably why it's the worst of the six.

Looking back, it may have been a missed opportunity. I probably should have asked Robert Floyd to work on it with me as it was interviewing him that made me write this fifth installment. Admittedly, I don't know what kind of cache that would have provided; the majority of the fans view Floyd as Jerry O'Connell's scab which I've always found unfair. It probably wouldn't be quite the same as, say, James Marsters and Juliet Landau writing comics featuring BUFFY and SPIKE.

That said, Floyd is quite present in all the REBORN scripts, not because of anything he contributed specifically to REBORN, but because REBORN is an attempt to pastiche Jerry O'Connell's voice and mannerisms just as Floyd sought to impersonate Jerry while making sure that copying someone else's voice and body language was just one aspect of playing a character, and the scripts are very informed by Floyd's choices.

Writing the first two scripts was fun and easy. Writing the third, fourth and fifth installments was all very tiring and I was ready for it to be over by 2016. But I was pleasantly surprised to discover that working with Slider_Quinn21 was a joyfully effortless breeze, probably because Matt and Nigel's work on the outlines had smoothed out all the plot problems in advance and Slider_Quinn21 and I could relax and focus entirely on dialogue and 'acting.'

I feel Slider_Quinn21’s contributions to SLIDERS REBORN could potentially seem understated, but the sixth script is the best one. Part of that it’s because it featured the sum total of all our respective talents: Matt’s hyperrational sense of plot, Nigel’s imaginative world-building, my commitment to typing it all up in a script.

Without Matt and Nigel, there would have been no clear vision of REBORN, but I think the sixth one is the most enjoyable to read because Slider_Quinn21 has a very firm grasp of how readers engage with text and absorb information and process prose and dialogue gave the final script a crisp, direct quality that made all the crazy ideas fun to read. Slider_Quinn21 had this commitment to clear, understandable, simple, straightforward description while appreciating that it was a novel in screenplay format.

There was a lot of overly dense, confusing description in the second half of the script where the sliders confront all the Season 3 monsters and Slider_Quinn21 helped clarify a lot of it while also noting when the action had dragged on for so long he’d lost track of what was going on. And he had the patience to indicate readability issues on some of the earlier scripts which I went back and touched up. I suspect that I will never be as readable again as I was for that final script.

There was also this delightful moment where he pointed out to me that my Arturo dialogue had become extremely overwritten with me giving the Professor so many big words and such an overexaggerated accent that he’d become a caricature of a caricature.

I’d given myself a December 31 deadline to post that script, but SQ21’s editing led to me publishing it four days earlier.

Slider_Quinn21 expressed a desire to do more SLIDERS stories together after REBORN and I felt it was time to move on, possibly from writing SLIDERS, possibly from writing entirely. But it was truly a golden age and I always look back at that period fondly and with great warmth and appreciation for Matt, Nigel, Robert Floyd, Slider_Quinn21... and, oddly but appropriately, David Peckinpah.

2019-01-08 17:40:37

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.

2019-01-08 17:09:56

I've been thinking about co-writers lately. I think I may be the sort of writer who can't function without one. I remember gravitating to Matt as my co-writer initially for SLIDERS REBORN because he'd asked me to write six reviews of six Season 5 episodes for EarthPrime.com. I wrote a review of "Please Press One" which was an incoherent rant about SLIDERS in Season 5 and Matt informed me he would need to rewrite it heavily to make it match the writing style of EP.COM. Matt and Mike Truman shared some of their reviews and I proceeded to write reviews of "A Current Affair," "The Java Jive," "The Return of Maggie Beckett," in a closer approximation of their style and then I went back and re-did the "Please Press One" review.

And then Matt lightly edited my reviews but did something that seemed to make him unusually nervous as he kept asking me over and over again if it concerned me -- he added jokes to the reviews. He added a wisecrack for "Please Press One" about how the sliders had successfully created a few odd jobs for some general contractors at Data Universal by blowing up a few walls. He added a longing remark to "A Current Affair" that a few revisions would have made a good episode great, even first season great. My latter reviews had tapped into EP.COM's sardonic voice, but Matt added some beautiful notes about how Diana had a mind-expanding, life-altering experience in "Map of the Mind" that she'd totally forget about.

I loved his additions. I wanted Matt to rewrite everything of mine for the rest of my life. Which led to me asking Matt to do the same for my SLIDERS REBORN outlines, an experience that I'm sure took years off his life.

I think the defining moment of our collaboration on SLIDERS REBORN was when Matt reviewed the novella, a story in which Mrs. Mallory is buying lemon bars at her favourite bakery when she is approached by a stranger. This man she doesn't know tells her the story of five seasons of sliding and how all the odd events of Seasons 3 - 5 were due to a cataclysmic multiversal event, and he's fixed it by erasing himself from reality and he now only exists as a paradox. The multiverse is stabilizing, and this remnant can only choose one person to remember him. He chooses Mrs. Mallory. She recognizes Quinn as her son and embraces him.

Matt gently pointed out all the problems here. The story took him about half an hour to read, which meant it would be at least an hour and a half to listen to. Why would Mrs. Mallory tolerate 90 minutes of a crazy person telling her an insane story? The means by which Quinn rebuilt reality made no sense whatsoever. The multiple reality warping machines involved seemed to have arbitrary and contradictory purposes. Matt asked to be let off this project and I agreed... but I also agreed with all of his criticisms and rewrote the draft.

The story was the same, but instead of Quinn talking to Mrs. Mallory, it was now Quinn in a mental ward telling his story to a doubtful psychiatrist who would raise all of the plotholes in Quinn's story in dialogue that I copied verbatim from Matt's emails. This forced Quinn (and me) to explain the plotholes and offer a rationale and led to a plot twist at the end that surprised me but which the subsequent readers seemed to like. Matt's criticisms were exactly what I needed. I would later ask Nigel Mitchell to help me with world-building, but I constantly returned to Matt for criticisms that I personally found very constructive.

"I have no time to revise a piece of non-canon fanfic and Wade Welles is dead, god damn it!" he would exclaim, but then proceed to grimly chat with me about SLIDERS REBORN and express exasperation, disbelief and frustration towards plot points I would immediately rewrite while reminding him that in SLIDERS, all fan fiction is canon and that "Requiem" point-blank established that Wade was still alive.

The fifth SLIDERS REBORN script was edited by nobody as Nigel felt he'd given me what he could by that point and it is the worst installment of all of them. The sixth script, I felt, was the best one as it benefited from Matt's spirit of oversight, Nigel's imagination for world-building and also Slider_Quinn21 who reviewed each page of script. Slider_Quinn21 noted when jokes didn't land and also reminded me to do things like explain how the Season 3 monsters could exist to descend upon San Francisco and that the sliders couldn't use road salt to fight the giant slug from "Paradise Lost" as no store in the Bay Area would carry it.

I have serious doubts that my writing is fit for human consumption without collaborators. I think I'm a bit like George Lucas: the first STAR WARS film had the benefit of consultation from Lucas' friends Spielberg and Ford Coppola as well as an uncredited dialogue rewrite from Willard and Gloria Hyuck. The prequels were Lucas writing mostly alone and it shows in some of the most incomprehensible, unsayable dialogue ever performed on the silver screen. "Are you sure we shouldn't be screenwriting partners?" I asked Matt awhile ago. "Quite sure," he assured me. "And you say that like we haven't already; the amount of time I put into SLIDERS REBORN was INSANE." And, not wanting to deprive his children of their father, I agreed.

I think I need a collaborator. I'm not quite sure what I would actually need from this collaborator, however. Matt pointed out logical errors and, in his way, would prod me towards my own solutions. Nigel had this Douglas Adams type of daring inventiveness. Slider_Quinn21 understood how to make a story readable and understandable. I told this to Matt once and he remarked that it was nice to hear that he was 33 per cent of a man. These three people could not have been more different, and the only reason they consented to endure my neediness and absurdities is because they loved SLIDERS too.

I wonder if the key might be for us to all become our own co-writers. Maybe it's up to me to do what Matt, Nigel and Slider_Quinn21 did for me but on my own.

2019-01-08 15:28:49

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.

2019-01-07 17:26:44

Murder Most Foul" is one of my favourite episodes of SLIDERS and possibly one of the finest episodes of the series. It is beautifully filmed, cleverly conceived, sharply written and delightfully performed. Fans have often watched it, expressed great appreciation for it and then wondered: how can this uplifting, thoughtful, imaginative episode be David Peckinpah's script?

Throughout Season 3, the SLIDERS confronted horror movie villains, dragons, Mad Max photocopies, intelligent talking flames and deathtraps. David Peckinpah commissioned these episodes. The average Season 3 script was an unedited, unrefined mess with characters not being given names or introductions ("Rules of the Game"), nonsensical exposition ("The Dream Masters"), clumsily considered world-building ("Electric Twister Acid Test"), witless exposition (Elston Diggs), and a startling lack of imagination and ideas ("Desert Storm") -- all of which were David Peckinpah's responsibility as showrunner.

Peckinpah's stewardship of SLIDERS was so lax that poor safety standards got actor Ken Steadman killed on the set of "Desert Storm." Peckinpah's oversight of SLIDERS was so vacant that the first 13 episodes overspent the season-long budget so badly that the back nine were operating under severe cost restrictions. In Season 4, Peckinpah used SLIDERS to express violent sexual fantasies towards Sabrina Lloyd and curtailed a season-long arc in order to annoy his story editor, Marc Scott Zicree. In Season 5, Peckinpah bought a pitch for "Easy Slider" in order to give his mistress (not his wife) stuntwork for an episode.

David Peckinpah clearly did not care about SLIDERS and was grossly incompetent -- and yet, "Murder Most Foul" is great. Why?

The Initial Explanation
Some people like Temporal Flux argue (quite correctly) that Peckinpah, a cop show veteran, wrote "Murder Most Foul" in a genre he knew well -- crime fiction. But "Murder Most Foul" is so intriguing, so innovative in its concepts that it goes beyond a firm grasp of procedural tropes. The science fiction in this story is brilliant. Mental fractures. False personalities to give the conscious mind a rest. The characterization is wonderfully contradictory and truthful: Arturo is humiliated by a fall into garbage and a bad temper but is nevertheless a brilliantly problem-solving detective even when he's not in his right mind.

Rembrandt intimidates a secretary into giving the sliders information while still being Rembrandt. There's young Trevor's wonder and joy towards the sliding concept. There's Quinn's cleverness and Arturo's strength of character saving the day.

"Murder Most Foul" is everything an episode of SLIDERS should be written by the man who destroyed SLIDERS. How is this possible?

A Terrible Loss
The terrible truth of Season 3 is and always has been this: David Peckinpah was a *great* writer. A brilliant director. A capable, skillful talented man who truly understood the TV medium. He introduces guest-characters correctly. Names and points of distinction so the audience will remember them later. He knows how to stage confrontations. He knows how to tell stories through action and dialogue. He even does the thought-provoking ending as the episode ends with us looking at little Trevor, the first of a new generation of sliders. Trevor was named after one of David Peckinpah's sons.

The sad fact is that David Peckinpah had *all* the skills needed to make SLIDERS great. He was a fun guy to work with. A gifted storyteller. Decades of experience. He had also known hardship; Peckinpah was a recovered drug addict who put his recklessness behind him to be a good father to his four children. He was sober for 20 years. And then, shortly before being assigned to SLIDERS, Peckinpah's 16-year-old son, Garrett, died of meningitis.

This broke Peckinpah. He fell apart psychologically and fell back into his drug addiction. He had a two-year development deal with Universal and they assigned him to SLIDERS -- a show that Peckinpah simply didn't care about. It is unlikely Peckinpah cared about much of anything at this point. His son had died. It left a hole in his heart that never healed. Note how Peckinpah was generally vindictive and angry towards people who made his working life challenging. Sabrina Lloyd. John Rhys-Davies. To those who asked little or nothing of him, Peckinpah was perfectly amiable.

Expensing Addictions
The midpoint of Season 3 was the "Exodus" two-parter, a production commissioned largely to hire Roger Daltrey and his band, The Who. The filming was an excuse to have a rock band perform for the cast and crew over two weeks of binge drinking with making the actual episodes as something to do between the performances and the parties. According to Temporal Flux, Peckinpah used SLIDERS as a line of credit to feed his addictions and loneliness. He started cheating on his wife with would-be actresses. His presence on SLIDERS was as a figure of indifference and laziness and vindictiveness towards people who demanded his efforts (John Rhys-Davies, Sabrina Lloyd, Marc Scott Zicree).

But he was a great writer. And when writing scripts, he couldn't hide that. "Murder Most Foul" and "Dinoslide" are well-written stories. "Genesis" is actually quite good in its execution even though the content is misguided. His work on SILK STALKINGS and FARSCAPE was solid. Peckinpah brought his A-game to the scripts he wrote with his own hands. He just didn't care to bring that same A-game to the other scripts on his show. He was not careful or considered in commissioning stories, he was not deliberate or attentive in reviewing teleplays, he was not interested or invested in revising or editing them. This attitude was present throughout the rest of SLIDERS' lifetime and quite sadly, throughout the rest of Peckinpah's life as well.

Where SLIDERS Was Born
Some time after SLIDERS, Peckinpah moved from Los Angeles to Vancouver. His stated reason was to rent a home and create a personal space to work on film and TV projects. But the reality was that it was simply a drug den and now he was far from the family and friends in Los Angeles who had monitored him and reduced the harm he was causing himself.

SLIDERS fans have compared Peckinpah to the devil, described him as a villain and a monstrosity who should burn in hell. The death of Ken Steadman and the cover-up that followed is most certainly on him given that he commissioned "Easy Slider" to grant his girlfriend stuntwork when she was not part of the stunt union. Despite a man's death due to lax safety standards, Temporal Flux reported that Peckinpah perpetuated the same laxness as late as Season 5.

In the end, Peckinpah was a broken and very sad man. He lost his son and he lost himself. He never addressed his grief; he never learned to live with it; he never moved past it. All he ever did was medicate his loss and in the end, it killed him. In 2006, Peckinpah experienced heart failure brought on by a drug overdose. He died in Vancouver where SLIDERS was born. He died alone, apart from his family, distant from his friends and a joke to the majority of his viewing audience on his highest profile production.

A Forgiving Family
Shortly after his death, Peckinpah's family posted on the SLIDERS forums, hurt and upset by the fans' vitriol. One of his other sons shared on IMDB the tragic story of his father's decline. For all of Peckinpah's many, many faults and infidelities, Peckinpah had loved his wife and children dearly and they forgave him his misdeeds. Informant remarked, "What you have to understand is that when you produce a show like SLIDERS, you are leaving behind a legacy. People really need to put some thought into what the hell they're making if they don't want that legacy to be people making fun of their work.

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

Informant's right. And yet -- I find myself contemplating the legacy of Ed Wood, often considered one of the worst screenwriters and directors to ever lens a film. Students of Wood have enjoyed affectionately poking fun at his disastrous projects while wondering -- is it possible that Wood's vision was actually worthwhile and meaningful and he merely lacked the ability to turn that vision into an enjoyable, professional product?

A Multigenre Vision
What was David Peckinpah's vision for SLIDERS? Had he been engaged, focused, devoted and invested, how would his vision of SLIDERS be realized? Certainly, he liked monster movies, he liked genre pastiches, he liked references to popular films -- so what would his work have been if his work had truly grappled with the SLIDERS format, an infinite storytelling engine that could most definitely render his ideas?

I think David Peckinpah's SLIDERS would have been like COMMUNITY, a sitcom in which the students of a community college regularly step outside the dramedy format to engage in parodies of Hong Kong action movies, procedurals, APOLLO 13, Westerns, post-apocalyptic dramas, superheroes, space opera, martial arts movies, documentaries and more. In each of COMMUNITY's parodies, the characters were modified slightly for the genre while still emphasizing their core characteristics and how suited or unsuited they were to the material. SLIDERS' genre pastiches were often presented as bloodily savage horror whereas COMMUNITY maintained its comedic bent, a choice that would have been far more suited to SLIDERS' light comedy origins.

When writing the final SLIDERS REBORN scripts (my fanfic magnum opus), it was always my wish to bring the Season 3 monsters into a script featuring a restored Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo and find some way to make them part of SLIDERS' grand tapestry while presenting the Season 1 - 2 mythology and characters as the core and definitive version of the show. In incorporating the monsters and finding non-violent ways to defeat them, SLIDERS became a Peckinpah-style pastiche -- a pastiche of the superhero movie. The content led to an unexpectedly celebratory attitude towards Peckinpah's ideas, and I decided to include a note at the beginning of the script dedicating the story to his memory.

In the end, David Peckinpah had a truly unique vision of SLIDERS that was paradoxically derivative. Had he committed to executing his vision as loving homages rather than clumsy ripoffs, SLIDERS would have thrived. Plugging the sliders into popular films didn't have to be empty so long as it was done with some irony and humour, and it could have been well-received by genre fans just as the parody episodes of COMMUNITY proved so popular that they became the majority of the show.

2019-01-07 17:12:57

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.

2019-01-06 16:45:27

I’m okay with this so long as you apply your view of the comics’ canonicity to ALL the comics in entirety. That’s at least consistent and reasoned and fair across the board.

2019-01-06 12:43:28

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.

2019-01-06 08:54:56

SPOILERS

The finale was a very interesting and strange choice and I’m curious how you reacted to it. It was very obvious when the trailer first hit that the situation was not what it seemed. Setting aside the unlikeliness of DC turning any broadcast version of Batman into a murderer executing cops and criminals alike, the previous episode had shown Dick walking into a house where Trigon, as Rachel’s father, clearly had something like her telepathic abilities. Any subsequent episode trailer that featured Dick returning to Gotham City to confront Batman as opposed to confronting Trigon was clearly going to be a hallucination. It was never in doubt, but the marketing hyped it as Batman versus Robin.

With that in mind, how did you feel about the story? Interestingly, it wasn’t meant to be the season finale, but the creators found the conclusion so compelling that they decided to make it a season cliffhanger and make their planned finale into the next season premiere.

2019-01-05 17:49:39

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.

2019-01-05 17:35:52

Stephen Amell said in his podcast with Michael Rosenbaum that his contract is over as of this year and he hadn't decided if he wanted to extend ARROW, but it would be his decision. LEGENDS' ratings are dire with Season 4 struggling to crack one million viewers.

2019-01-05 10:38:39

I wonder if they'll do something like JURASSIC PARK III (which I've never seen) where they highlighted an actor's absence from the previous installment (which I also never saw):

Symposium Leader: "Does anyone have a question?"

The entire audience raises their hands.

Dr. Grant: "Fine. Does anyone have a question that does not relate to Jurassic Park -- ?"

Several audience members lower their hands.

Dr. Grant: " -- or the incident in San Diego. Which I did not witness."

The entire audience except one person lowers their hands.

2019-01-04 16:53:35

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Since I don't know what happens on Punisher season 2, I'll have to speculate. Maybe Jigsaw has driven Frank to some sort of safe house. In Daredevil, you have Karen call Frank. She apologizes for calling him, but he's her last hope. There's nowhere to turn and Kingpin is going to kill her. She expects it to work, but Frank declines. He comes off like a jerk. Like, of course, he won't come. What does she mean to him? Why would he risk his life for her? Click.
In the Punisher, around episode 10, Frank gets that call. He's hidden away. If he moves, he's dead. And if he's dead, Karen's dead. He can't leave. So he pretends like he doesn't care. Because pushing away people is what he's good at. Episode 13, Frank shows up to the hotel, and he sees that Karen is okay. That Matt is protecting her from the rooftop. She handled herself.

This is a pretty good idea, but it's not without its problems. The audience loses focus on how Matt is clearly losing his mind as he abandons his identity and is increasingly suicidal, on how Fisk has gone from a jumpsuit and a half-eaten TV dinner to living in the lap of luxury, on how Karen is outgunned and Matt is concerned for her safety but distant from her situation -- and instead, the focus becomes entirely on Castle even if he's only heard in a voiceover. Why is Frank behaving out of character? Why has the show rendered him in a fashion completely against his love for Karen in his previous appearances?

It's (gleefully and cleverly) calling attention to a problem that serves only to distract the viewer when it's preferable to move this issue to the realm of what TV Tropes calls Fridge Logic, something you only wonder about after the credits have rolled and you're getting something to eat.

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

But you're probably right. Don't reference it and no one asks the question. Because, realistically, Frank would risk anything to save her. Since he doesn't show up, he's either saved her in the background or, for Daredevil season 3, he simply doesn't exist. (Thanos!)

If Netflix weren't urgently exciting the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I'd expect one of those ONE-SHOT type short films where Frank we either have the story you described above or we see Frank surveilling Karen throughout Season 3: he uses a sniper rifle to take down gunmen chasing her, is crouched behind a porch when streetpunks menace her on the street, he's impersonating one of the FBI agents searching the church and misdirecting them, he's listening quietly when Karen reveals how she got her brother killed, etc..

But this raises its own problems too: if Karen's danger is retroactively reduced because Castle was lurking slightly out of frame the entire time, it diminishes Season 3's sense of threat. Also, there's a certain comedic goofiness to this blatant retcon that might be awkward for a militaristic, serious series like THE PUNISHER.

This reminds me of an episode of SMALLVILLE where Oliver (please try to think of Justin Hartley) is looking to murder Lex Luthor and Clark is trying to prevent this passively by refusing to hand over a router that could lead to Lex's location. Oliver agrees to let Clark handle it, but then speaks with a subordinate who informs Oliver that he has copied the data from the router. This would be the unplugged, disconnected router that Clark was holding in his hand which this anonymous suit claims he could somehow read and clone without ever going near it. It makes no sense whatsoever.

The reason for this error: the subordinate was supposed to be Cyborg and his ability to interface with any technology remotely and power it regardless of its disconnection, but actor Lee Thompson Young backed out at the last second and with no time for a rewrite, Cyborg's dialogue was given to another performer.

Regardless, it reminds me of my old SLIDERS standby when asked how the cast could alternate between the same outfits and how the Professor always had a tailored suit -- all plot and production problems are just one missing story away from being explained.

2019-01-04 11:45:56

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Yeah, and I get that these shared universes can't always be guest starring and spinning off and crossing over. But that's why I think they need to get creative with dialogue. There are a hundred reasons why Frank wouldn't appear, and they just need one of them. You could do 90% of those reasons without Jon Bernthal showing up. Have a scene where Karen is on the phone with Frank and tells him to stay away. Or, heck, have Frank be her escape plan...she just needs to take care of one more thing first (which leads her to the church and the rest of the season). Have her try Frank and he can't answer (cliffhanger to Frank season 2 to some time when he's away or in danger). Maybe the phone she tries for him doesn't work (he gets a new phone).

I can't see this working at all. Frank loves Karen. I don't know that it's necessarily romantic, but there is a devotion. A caring that goes beyond pleasantries and deeply into respect, appreciation, longing, and there is nothing Karen could say that could keep him away if she were in danger nor would he keep his distance even if Bullseye's only trying to scare her. And if Frank doesn't answer Karen's phone call or isn't at her doorstep within an hour of a voicemail, then Frank is being written out of character.

There is no way to mention Frank briefly and have him be unavailable when a person he cherishes and treasures and to whom he has the utmost loyalty and respect is being hunted without having Bernthal onscreen to establish that he's physically unable to get to Karen for whatever reason and the only way to make that plausible would be to turn it into a PUNISHER story when it's a season of DAREDEVIL. I don't think Frank is in love with Karen -- I don't think he's over his wife and he may never recover from her loss, but (by process of elimination), Karen is the most important person in the world to him. Could YOUR wife convince you to stay away if she were in trouble?

What explanation would satisfy? Frank had food poisoning? Constipation? Flu? Silent retreat in the wilderness? Would any of these convincingly keep Frank away?

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

Of course, I didn't even think of it...you had to...so maybe they didn't need anything

This is pretty much they were going for, I think. They couldn't come up with a convincing answer, so they decided not to raise the question. If Bernthal had been available, they probably could have done a few episodes where Frank is helping Karen but Frank is injured or arrested by the Fisk-corrupted FBI and taken out of the series until he escapes for the finale and helps Matt get through security to confront Fisk in his penthouse. You could even do a thing where Frank sizes Bullseye up, determines that he can't beat him and leaves it to Matt and Matt's supersenses, choosing to focus on helping Karen instead. But the actor was filming his own show.

If I HAD to explain it, I would probably say that there were many, many, many more attempts on Karen's life than we actually saw onscreen and Frank was dealing with them off camera so covertly, so quietly and in such a black-ops manner that nobody ever knew he was there. A similar joke was made in an AVENGERS comic (actually, it was an issue of THE ULTIMATES) where Hawkeye yells at Quicksilver for not helping out in a battle against Ultron and Quicksilver says that he saved Hawkeye's life 30 - 40 times at superspeed and he's annoyed that Hawkeye isn't grateful. Or that episode of COMMUNITY where Jack Black was edited into flashbacks or that episode of LOST that I can't remember, but I know you like LOST references.

2019-01-04 03:15:33

And now for Tech Talk with Quinn Mallory:

I remember the exact moment I gave up on the Moto G5 Plus smartphone. I was making a two hour drive down an express highway when the podcast player went dead while Google Maps was guiding me towards my destination. Watching the road, I swiped my finger across the fingerprint sensor to switch to the previous foreground app -- the podcasts -- so that I could hit play. In mid-switch, the phone proceeded to shut down Google Maps. I think what it came down to was that 2 GB of RAM just wasn't enough for Android to multitask anymore. The phone had been lagging a bit until an Android update at which point the Moto G5 Plus dispensed with freezing, unresponsive UI performances by simply quitting apps.

So I sold it. That and fifty bucks bought me a refurbished, slightly scuffed, mildly chipped Samsung S7 with 4 GB of RAM and state of the art flagship hardware from 2016. It's pretty good and the camera might liberate me from carrying DSLRs and camcorders going forward -- but a few things alarm me.

The first is that the phone has a subtly curved edge around the screen. The result is that tempered glass protectors either don't attach securely or attach but create distortions of air pockets down the sides of the screen. The only workable screen protection so far has been a gel-film protector that adheres to the screen with liquid and can curve to fit the rounded surface -- and such protectors guard against scratches but offer no real drop protection. I didn't realize the phone lacked a flat design suited to tempered glass and I've dropped my phone a lot over the years.

I recall shattering the screen on my Samsung Galaxy S3 twice in my pre-tempered glass days. However, it occurs to me that the S3 used Gorilla Glass 2. The S7 uses Gorilla Glass 4 which is estimated to be six times less breakable and scratchable than Gorilla Glass 2, so maybe the stronger glass, my protective film and the TPU case can handle my life. That said, I've used gel-film with liquid installs on my tablets. They adhere permanently to flat surfaces. On the curved surfaces like the rears of my tablets, however, they've always peeled loose over time. The curve on the S7 screen is so subtle and slight I didn't notice it until I tried to apply a tempered glass protector, though -- maybe it'll hold.

If it peels off, however, I'll have to turn to my last resort -- a liquid screen protection fluid that supposedly applies a microscopic coating to glass to guard against scuffs and scratches and (in theory) drops. But for all I know, it could be mineral water in those tubes.

The other thing that weirds me out is how crazy heated the phone got. My Moto G5 Plus had a metal backing (on a plastic frame) and always felt cool; the S7 got really warm as it was downloading Google Play app updates. Eventually, I found the battery settings and switched on the CPU limiter. I also turned off the Always On display because I'm nervous that that's a recipe for burn-in. The screen offers a 1440 resolution but lets you dial it down to 1080 and 720. I set the screen to 720 pixels wide and... couldn't tell the difference between that and the highest resolution, so I left it on low if only to take it easy on the graphics processor. The phone has cooled now, but for an hour or so, I was wondering if it would burst into flame like a Note 7.

I had to connect the phone to my computer to activate immersive mode and hide the status bar to prevent burn-in. Samsung has kindly opened up themes for their Android build, so I chose a Google Pixel style theme and installed Nova Launcher which mimics the Google app launcher and also installed Google Messages, Calendar and Clock. The software looks like a Pixel now.

Informant, do you have the option of changing the resolution on your Note and can you tell the difference?

2019-01-04 02:34:39

Karen will be in PUNISHER's upcoming season, but I'm not sure how much she'll be in it as the actress was busy filming DAREDEVIL.

My guess -- and it is just a guess -- they simply couldn't get Frank's actor in Season 3 to the degree in which they would have needed him. He's a difficult character to bring in for a cameo and usher away if Karen's in danger and you'd spend the rest of the season wondering why he didn't come back. So rather they decided not to raise the issue at all. It reminds me of when Worf got married on DEEP SPACE NINE and production could only secure appearances for Riker and LaForge, which would leave the audience wondering if Picard, Data, Crusher and Troi didn't like Worf anymore, so rather than bring up a question that could not be satisfactorily addressed, it was set aside entirely.

2019-01-02 17:28:34

We might find ourselves watching THE PUNISHER and wondering where the hell Karen is when Frank needs her, as both the new season of PUNISHER and the last season of DAREDEVIL were filmed at the same time leading to actor unavailabilities.

2019-01-01 09:24:01

Hey, Slider_Quinn21 -- since you've seen FALLOUT now -- what do you think of seeing Ethan Hunt in this movie as an image of what Quinn Mallory would be in his forties? Posts below:

http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7578#p7578
http://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?pid=7645#p7645

2018-12-30 17:41:01

Allison Mack's defense lawyers have decided to try to argue that blackmailing people into sexual slavery isn't illegal:

https://jezebel.com/allison-macks-lawye … 1831388421

2018-12-30 13:19:48

The expectation for reshoots is that they're for a limited number of insert shots for pre-existing sequences such as, say, one shot of Captain America sitting at a table. Under this expectation, actors usually aren't asked to retain their principal photography look as a wig or a slightly different figure or a computer-generated jawline isn't going to be noticeable in brief shots added to otherwise complete scenes.

In the case of FANTASTIC FOUR and JUSTICE LEAGUE, the stories were radically restructured in the reshoots with completely new scenes that don't fit into the principal footage. The majority of Superman's scenes in JUSTICE LEAGUE were filmed by Whedon.

I am guessing that the original material with Superman set in a soft cliffhanger where the he'd fought off the Anti-Life Equation (which had infected him in the BVS Knightmare sequence), but Darkseid would be coming to Earth after Steppenwolf's failure and Darkseid might retrigger the Equation and turn Superman into an agent of Apokolips with the plot to be resolved in JUSTICE LEAGUE II. But when Zack Snyder decided to leave both JUSTICE LEAGUE and the DCEU, WB decided to reshoot all of Superman's scenes to offer conclusive closure. Just a theory, of course.

While Paramount was within their rights to refuse to shut down M:I's filming, they'd better hope they never need WB to do them a solid. Admittedly, Paramount might safeguard against that by making sure to contract their actors to maintain their filming appearance any extensive reshoots -- or by having a policy of hiring directors and writers to make movies and then let the resulting product stand or fall without attempting to turn the project into something else mid-filming. WB could have asked a new director to resolve the hypothetical Snyder plot without him.

2018-12-28 17:27:24

Also, Kara spent most of her life hiding her powers and subsuming herself into a human identity while Superman has embraced both his human life as Clark and his Kryptonian side as Kal-El.

2018-12-27 16:31:45

My opinion is that SUPERNATURAL is not the real world and that a planet Earth with monsters and angels and demons roaming the streets, even in secret, would be in a very different political place from our world. Dean has spent most of his life living off the grid; I can't imagine him bothering with politics.

I think trying to figure out if he voted for Trump or Clinton or third party or whatever is searching for something that just doesn't exist -- and honestly, I don't think we should bring it into existence. For all my Views about Informant, I would prefer that Informant could look at Dean and see whatever he needs to see. It's already tough for him when Superman is presented as an alien citizen of the world who was raised by a hologram of Jor-El instead of being Clark Kent raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent in Kansas. I would not wish to add to his burden.

There's also the fact that many, many, many different writers and showrunners have written for Dean and many fans have reacted to Dean differently and created their own Dean.

For example, Lauren's personal vision of Dean: he's bisexual. I cannot see this at all; Dean to me is one of the most hilariously, ridiculously heterosexual men on television and while I don't think he's homophobic, he's averse to homosexuality. It makes him uncomfortable. If he saw two men kissing, he would avert his eyes, apologize for his discomfort, declare he's trying to give them privacy and then say something like, "My problem, not yours. You do you, boys."

I don't really see Dean as a sexual harasser, either. Yes, Dean is very into casual sex, but Dean's attitude to women seems to be to approach with a compliment and a willing smile and then let the woman make the next move or fail to in which case he immediately moves on to another prospect. Dean is also deeply, innately unattracted to women who are unassertive; if a woman didn't seem interested in flirting back with him, Dean would lose interest straightaway. Dean wants women who match his sex drive.

2018-12-27 16:30:03

I do think the mustache was necessary for Cavill. He's a dark haired white guy. Tom Cruise is a dark haired white guy. I need to be able to tell them apart when the camera is flying around them; I need to know who's fighting who.

According to McQuarrie, when JUSTICE LEAGUE producer Chuck Roven approached him about needing a shaven Henry Cavill, McQuarrie decided the plan was this: McQuarrie would suspend production on M:I, Cavill would shave and perform his reshoots for JUSTICE LEAGUE and then begin to regrow the mustache and resume filming M:I.

The slight growth in facial hair would be multiplied digitally for the M:I footage in order to match previously filmed material with Cavill and his mustache. Adding facial hair digitally is much easier than removing it, especially when there's a starting point in hair-to-skin texture that merely needs to be magnified. Roven and WB agreed to pay Paramount the $3 million for this added special effects cost.

But then Paramount stepped in, informing McQuarrie that he would not be permitted to shut down M:I filming for the benefit of another studio's film. They refused to even discuss it, considering WB's problems not their concern and not moved at all by McQuarrie's wish to be kind to his fellow filmmakers. McQuarrie expressed great regret and disappointment over this.

2018-12-27 16:28:53

Informant wrote:

if you plopped me down in one of the countries where my ancestors came from. I might have a curiosity about those cultures in some way (though I really have no more or less interest in my ancestral cultures than I do any other cultures, so I may be a bad example), but they are not my culture, and those lands are not my home. I have more connection to my Asian neighbors across the street who don't speak a word of English than I do to a random person from Ireland.

The pre-1944 Superman was a very different character from the post-1986 Clark Kent. Jonathan and Martha Kent had died when Superman was 18 or so. The characters were at most cameos. There was the sense that Superman (as opposed to Clark) had an amiable but distant relationship with his parents; he never mentioned them, it was like they didn't exist -- and there was the sense that Superman based his identity on the databank in his spaceship and the Fortress of Solitude and spent most of his childhood in hiding until his parents died and he made his debut as Superman.

However, this was undermined in 1944 when Superboy debuted and showed Superman's career as a teenager and depicted Jonathan and Martha Kent in a loving, close relationship with their adopted son. The Superman and Superboy comics were hopelessly at odds, having teen versions of Lois and Clark meet each other in contradiction to their first encounters in the Superman comics. Superman's origin story would be updated with his Superboy career in flashback issues, but Superman and Superboy would continue presenting two irreconciliable versions of their lead character and his life with Superboy as a very American and human character and Superman as an extremely alien character for whom "Clark Kent" was a constructed psych experiment. There was the (probably unintended) implication that the death of Jonathan and Martha would lead to Superman drifting from his humanity except in terms of the "Clark" identity.

The Superboy adventures were (retroactively) declared to have taken place in a "pocket universe" separate from the main DC Universe, although this had less to do with the Superboy/Superman contradictions and more to do with explaining how the Legion of Super Heroes could have featured a Superboy who never existed after the 1986 reboot. The 2010 Secret Origin mini-series, however, restored Superboy to Clark's origin story and fit in a lot better with the modern Clark Kent than the pre-1986 Superman.

Anyway. My point is that the alien Superman is just as valid a take as Clark Kent of Kansas. Yes, Clark Kent has become the main personality and this has ultimately proven to be a good move and a natural progression for the character. But every adaptation should feel free to choose whatever aspects of Superman suit its purpose whether it's the alien Superman or the human Clark and SUPERGIRL, in depicting Kara's role model, chose to have Superman reflect more of his Kryptonian heritage in his dialogue which served as an effective contrast to Kara being more defined by her human connections.

2018-12-26 12:15:52

And now for Tech Talk, with Quinn Mallory:

I've never had much use for a smartwatch, but I did have use for a fitness watch for tracking my steps, heartrate, sleeping patterns, calories burned, etc.. When the world was going nuts over the Apple Watch, I instead got an open box Fitbit Blaze which didn't have apps. You couldn't answer texts or talk on the phone -- it was just a fitness tracker that had a colourful screen that snapped into a wrist-strap and helped me figure out how much I could allow myself to eat. Fitbit released the Ionic, a square and huge smartwatch with a discrete GPS and a development platform for apps that were... not awesome. Fitbit released the Versa, a rounded and compact smartwatch that relied on the phone for GPS and had a development platform for apps that were still... not awesome.

I was content with my somewhat clunky but oddly charming Fitbit Blaze -- until a new announcement of Fitbit OS 3.0 for the Ionic and Versa with a new app for the Versa that could monitor your physical readings when you were sick and then, in the future, warn you of an impending illness so that you could take preventative measures via extra sleep, vitamins and herbal supplements. I immediately ran out and bought a Fitbit Versa for this feature. Only to discover -- this app, Achu, isn't an app for the watch. It's a (hideous) clockface. And the data the Achu uses to offer its assessments (on this clock face) is actually gathered by an Android app tracking your Fitbit readings -- and Achu would have worked just as well with the Fitbit Blaze.

......................... anyway. I sold the Fitbit Blaze for 53.2 % of the money it cost to buy the Versa.

2018-12-26 11:54:01

My niece and I were recently having a conversation. She told me that she's in the process of separating her online handle from her real name because, as a film student hoping to enter the industry, she doesn't want her real name to show up in association with her fan fiction. "Are you ashamed of your writing?" I asked her. "I mean, your descriptions could use some work, but the stories are solid like Dean and Cas being ice skaters."

"I just don't want that stuff to represent me," she said in a slightly evasive fashion. So I turned it around, asking her: should I be worried that my name is on my SLIDERS REBORN scripts? She replied that I wasn't looking to get into the film industry and even if I were, those scripts wouldn't be a problem because SLIDERS REBORN actually looks like scripts. They were written in screenwriting software. "Also, I've looked through your stuff and there isn't anything to be embarrassed about. I mean, you basically wrote STAR TREK novels. They're media tie-ins. If there were SLIDERS novels, you could probably have sold them."

"So what you're saying," I said cautiously, "is that your writing is embarrassing in a professional context because it delves into your fetishes and your desire to see two attractive men kissing and having sex whereas my writing is acceptable because it's an attempt to meet the professional format and falls within the content restrictions and also because my material isn't particularly romantic and not at all sexual."

"Yes," she said.

Hunnh. I have to say, it really bothers me that she doesn't feel comfortable putting her name on her writing, but there is that old saying that autobiographies can lie but fiction reveals all. I, personally, am very proud of what my fanfic says about me and it's a significantly more flattering image than the flawed reality of the actual me.

2018-12-25 09:29:19

I'd like to re-present "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition," a rewritten version of the Season 4 episode of "Net Worth" now featuring the original cast and offering a vision of how "Net Worth" was originally a Season 3 story called "Onliners" that would revisit the Quinn and Wade romance in an internet-fuelled version of ROMEO & JULIET. There has been great confusion surrounding the history of "Net Worth" and whether or not it came out of Season 3.

http://freepdfhosting.com/5e12f7fac9.pdf

In 1997, shortly before Season 3 aired, a preliminary list of Season 3 episodes was released online. This list included an episode called "Onliners," but no such episode ever aired. Temporal Flux later explained that his contacts in the SLIDERS production office had told him that "Onliners" would have been an internet-driven version of ROMEO AND JULIET and explore Quinn and Wade's potential romance. It was scrapped when John Rhys-Davies was fired.

TF believed that "Onliners" was retooled into "Net Worth," the internet-driven ROMEO AND JULIET story of Season 4 which would explain many odd aspects of "Net Worth," particularly how the Rick and Joanne guest characters were used in ways that would could only have been effective had they been Quinn and Wade doubles.

At various points in the aired "Net Worth," Rick is referred to as a genius. In the script, he makes references to alternate dimensions without having been introduced to sliding. Joanne displays an obsessive fixation on computers and bonds over the subject with Rick. In one scene, Maggie indicates in-depth knowledge of Joanne despite having only met her one scene previous; a deleted scene has Rick cracking wise to Quinn about talking to himself -- all of which seemed to be artifacts of Quinn-2 and Wade-2, the doubles, being abruptly rewritten into new guest characters and Wade's dialogue assigned to Maggie.

However, in a rare instance of Temporal Flux seeming to be flat out wrong: EarthPrime's Matt Hutaff contacted "Net Worth" writer Steve Stoliar. Stoliar said he had no recollection of "Net Worth" having ever been pitched in Season 3 or having ever featured Quinn and Wade doubles. In addition, Matt had many discussions with a Season 3 producer who also had no memory of any story called "Onliners."

TF himself had never found a script for "Onliners" and wondered if it had been a verbal pitch, something not committed to paper like the plans for Logan St. Clair's return.

It was peculiar, however, that Tracy Torme remembered "Onliners" in his 2009 interview and had once held hopes for producing the unused story as a comic book. Was TF was mistaken? Had "Onliners" had been an unrelated story? Could Steven Stoliar have somehow forgotten "Net Worth"'s origins? The matter seemed destined to remain unresolved, although it's impossible to watch "Net Worth" without feeling that Rick and Joanne's characters have been produced with a search and replace function pasting their names over Quinn-2 and Wade-2.

Later on, however, Matt unearthed a Season 3 progress report dated March 1997 from the SLIDERS production office. This report indicated that (a) "Onliners" had been retitled as "Net Worth" (it's a good pun) and (b) "Net Worth" had indeed been commissioned as a Season 3 script with a production code K1811 -- but cancelled along with "Heat of the Moment," another script (by Tracy Torme!) scrapped because of Davies' departure. This document was written about two to three months after John Rhys-Davies was fired. TF had proven correct. "Net Worth" had been a Season 3 pitch featuring Quinn and Wade.

(Shock! Gasp! Temporal Flux had proven correct on a matter involving SLIDERS? The de facto expert on the series knows his stuff when it comes to the show?)

As a writing exercise, I took Stoliar's Season 4 draft of "Net Worth" and rewrote it into "Net Worth: The Quinn and Wade Edition," featuring the original sliding team in the plot of "Net Worth" with every scene reworked and rewritten but featuring most of Stoliar's dialogue and action. Originally, it was a very speculative piece of writing on what could have been; now it's a speculative piece of writing on what was meant to be.

http://freepdfhosting.com/5e12f7fac9.pdf

2018-12-25 08:27:28

Conversation with the niece!

IB: "So, something I noticed in the episode with the resurrected zombie boyfriend and the serial killer shopgirl -- "

LAUREN: "Yeah?"

IB: "Well, at two points in the episode, Jack and Dean have a clear line of fire to take Harper the Serial Killer Shopgirl out -- but they don't take it. They're keen to stop the zombie boyfriend, but the direction and the blocking and editing are very careful not to show them being physically aggressive towards a woman."

LAUREN: "Well, yeah."

IB: "And a couple seasons ago -- the British Men of Letters organization turned Sam and Dean's mother into a brainwashed assassin who'd killed any number of Sam and Dean's friends. So when they corner the lady who runs the Men of Letters, Sam should be well within his rights to execute this psychotic murderess -- she's declared honest-to-God, all-out war on hunters which is the moral equivalent of sending a sniper after firemen and paramedics. But Sam waits for the lady to pull her weapon BEFORE he shoots her."

LAUREN: "Yeah, it's totally justifiable -- but the show just doesn't want to show men killing women onscreen. Because even if it's not real, it's still -- it's a really disturbing image in real-world situations because in real life, when men kill women, it's about power and dominance and control and SUPERNATURAL doesn't want to endorse that or have footage for that."

IB: "Well, for the third time -- Harper is a serial killer."

LAUREN: "Oh, like Sam and Dean haven't murdered lots of people."

IB: "Like who!? I mean, there was that lady whose blood Sam drank, but she was possessed by a demon -- and there was the werewolf mercy killing -- "

LAUREN: "How about that Frankenstein family member who got dragged into breaking into the bunker?"

IB: "Oh, that's fine."

LAUREN: "How was that fine!?"

IB: "He was part of a home invasion! I'm sorry, but you invade someone's home, you die. Sam and Dean will never feel safe in the bunker again!"

LAUREN: "Oh, I hate the bunker. Sam and Dean are supposed to be working class heroes; I don't like them being heirs to the Men of Letters legacy."

2018-12-24 16:49:30

I think it would be best if SLIDERSCAST never returned. Look, I love Jim Ford. He gave me the idea for introducing Quinn Mallory's daughter to SLIDERS REBORN. He plugged my "Slide Effects" script. He plugged SLIDERS REBORN in a special message recorded for the twentieth anniversary and argued that it's not technically a non-canon story since all fanfic is canonical in SLIDERS. And Dan Kurtzke has his moments ("Tuesday Floozeday!") and they had Annie Fish guest-star on the podcast.

But let's look at their results: they don't adhere to any kind of schedule, regularly giving the impression that SLIDERSCAST has been abandoned. Dan is clearly not engaged with SLIDERS at all, spending every episode bringing up the most asinine complaints (he protests that the sliders just shouldn't get involved in any plots and hide out in a bunker or something). Jim is solid, but this is a podcasting pair who failed to discuss the MASSIVE visual differences between "As Time Goes By" and "Double Cross," who completely missed the huge production changes and characterization alterations between "Luck of the Draw" and "Into the Mystic."

Why are Jim and Dan reviewing episodes of SLIDERS when they can't seem to invest in the viewing experience of SLIDERS enough to grasp the obvious and glaring? What is the point of a SLIDERS podcast that analyzes SLIDERS in such a clumsy, incapable, incompetent fashion?

Jim and Dan should move on. Dan clearly wants to do a STARGATE podcast, Jim would clearly enjoy that too -- so I suggest that they leave SLIDERSCAST behind (I mean, they have already) and do their STARGATECAST. That'll be fine. I would even start watching STARGATE just to enjoy their STARGATE podcast. It's not that Jim and Dan are bad podcasters; they're just bad SLIDERS podcasters and they would be great if tackling content for which they *both* had passion and interest. Only one person in SLIDERSCAST is actually interested in SLIDERS.

2018-12-22 20:56:42

I've set up a Create Account link in the top menu. It links to a Google Form that allows people to submit their username and email of choice. The form will send me any username requests and I can use that to create new accounts for people instead of asking them to email me personally. This isn't ideal, but the PunBB software hasn't been updated in some time and its extensions for spambot filtering have been falling into disrepair. I'm wondering if it's time to switch to something else, but I'm hesitant to move this Bboard to new software after all the upheaval of the past.

I also disabled the mobile theme as it wasn't working well with new mobile browsers.

2018-12-22 16:47:06

Don't get me wrong, it's always good to see Sid running around -- but I feel like SUPERNATURAL has moved past the need for Jeffrey Dean Morgan and they found a good actor to play the younger version of him. The spirit of John Winchester haunts the show, but given that the character is dead and the leads are perpetually struggling with his legacy, the actor's absence has always made sense.

2018-12-20 19:16:44

Tyler Hoechlin's Superman is great; he's just not the Superman whom Informant wants to see. Informant has an extremely particular vision of Superman based on the 1986 John Byrne reboot and the SMALLVILLE series. Prior to 1986, Superman was the alien inheritor of the legacy of Krypton's culture and technology who disguised himself as Clark Kent for what looked like a bizarre sociological experiment.

Given that Informant threw a fit over one line of dialogue where Hoechlin's Superman referred to English as "your language," I think it's safe to say he wouldn't enjoy this version of Superman.

Pre-1970, there wasn't a lot of thought put into WHY Superman pretended to be Clark beyond (a) positioning himself at the Daily Planet to catch news of emergencies that needed Superman and (b) giving Superman a vulnerable human persona so readers could relate to him. Elliot S! Maggin, the primary Superman writer of the 1970s, took the view that Superman enjoyed living as Clark the way cosplayers enjoy dressing up as Superman; Superman found civilian life thrilling. But there were a lot of challenges with this character and that led to the 1986 reboot.

The 1986 reboot Superman determinedly does *not* see himself as Kal-El of Krypton, son of Jor-El. He thinks of himself as Clark Kent, son of Jonathan and Martha. The reboot goes so far as to say Kryptonians don't have sex but harvest sperm and eggs to be formulated in a mechanical "matrix" which only completed 'birthing' Clark after the pod landed in Kansas. Clark only discovers his Kryptonian origins at age 36 from a holographic Jor-El. "I may have been conceived out there in the depths of space," says Clark, "but I was born when the rocket opened on Earth, in America."

He respects his Kryptonian heritage and the hologram uploads a vast databank of Kryptonian knowledge into his brain, but this character is distinctly Clark Kent with Superman being his disguise. This version was certainly a much stronger *character* in contrast to the complex, alien, unknowable Superman before 1986. Since the reboot, every film and TV adaptation has gravitated to the Kansas farmboy version.

But it is untrue to claim that Clark of Kansas is only acceptable version of this character. The original was good enough for 48 years and created a media empire that continues to this day. Both versions of the character have their advantages and disadvantages. At times, Informant blowing a gasket over Superman being presented as a strange visitor from another world reminds me of John Rhys-Davies having a tantrum over not seeing himself in how Arturo is written.

Tyler Hoechlin's Superman is neither lacking in strength nor devoid of presence -- he just isn't strong or present in the ways that Informant wants, but all of Superman's actors have had their strengths and weaknesses.

Christopher Reeve played the alien Superman and he exuded warmth, charisma and he had the physicality to convince you that he was flying instead of dangling from wires, but his Clark was such a bundle of comical mannerisms that it made him seem sociopathic and self-torturing in his desire to live as a belittled incompetent who annoyed the people around him. Any time Reeve's Superman or Clark interact with anybody -- Lois, Jimmy, Perry, strangers -- there's a situational falseness that isn't part of Reeve's performance.

This culminated in KILL BILL II: the villain remarked that Clark Kent's clumsy unassertiveness looked like Superman's contemptuous critique of all human beings. This leaves one wondering why Superman bothers to protect us at all. It is the primary weakness of the pre-1986 Superman and why the reboot reversed nearly all of these characteristics.

Dean Cain's Clark Kent was the 1986 Clark. Cain had a superhuman grace, charm and politeness that was truthful, allowing this Clark to have emotional arcs and actual relationships. However, his Superman was awkward. To differentiate Clark from Superman, Cain's Superman was simply Clark with Cain suppressing all his natural mannerisms and clearly feeling awkward and silly in his costume.

It's noticeable that Cain's Clark is a full-bodied performance while his Superman never quite knows how tall to stand or how to move with the cape or where to hold his hands. Thankfully, Superman was at most a cameo role in a show where Clark was the leading man. And this is the main failing of the post-1986 Superman: there is no distinction between Clark Kent and Superman, undermining the plausibility of Clark going unrecognized and failing to create any meaningful conflict involving Superman's dual-identity because, in terms of characterization, he doesn't have one.

Tom Welling was unusual in that Welling isn't much of an actor. Welling played himself onscreen and his Clark exuded Tom's own warmth, care and kindness matched with Tom's incredible physical presence. As a male model and amateur athlete, Welling had Reeve's ability to convey superhuman powers through his natural body language. Welling is the sort of person who spends his free time going to toy stores, buying out their inventory and sitting quietly in his living room wrapping them one-by-one and then driving them to various children's charities before Christmas. Welling reportedly earned no salary on the SMALLVILLE series finale, redistributing his pay to offer Michael Rosenbaum a bigger paycheque to win him for two days of filming.

Welling's personality was perfectly in sync with his character (although not always with the writing which made Clark seem selfish and indifferent). He also did a great job with performing the withdrawn and solitary Clark Kent in contrast to his Red Kryptonite affected persona and his alternate universe double, both of whom had a swaggering, dominant physicality that the usual Clark didn't.

When watching him onscreen in Seasons 1, 8, 9 and 10, the truth of his performance overcomes his weaknesses as a performer -- which are many. His perfect screen presence is marred by a lack of technical ability as an actor. His enunciation can be awkward such as his inability to pronounce "vigilante." His reactions to events and other actors are muted. He performs poorly with post-filming special effects; note his blankness when conversing with onscreen doubles and see that Tom cannot pretend he isn't looking at a tennis ball on a string.

Over time, this was finessed into his Clark being a thoughtful, low-key personality and it added a beautiful gentleness to his persona as he supersped into burning buildings, gunfights and car wrecks. Tom Welling and the SMALLVILLE special effects team made saving people look exciting and awe-inspiring and conveyed Clark's power and compassion.

And this is where the Brandon Routh Superman crashed hard. SUPERMAN RETURNS has no combat; Superman spends the film saving people just like Clark on SMALLVILLE, but SUPERMAN RETURNS directed in such a dull, unexciting fashion that there's almost no visceral intensity aside from the plane crash. Brandon Routh, as directed, was asked to play Superman and Clark Kent as the same low-key, quiet personality, much like Welling, but with far less scripting.

In fact, Routh was so underwritten in SUPERMAN RETURNS that it's hard to understand why this Clark Kent works at a newspaper (can't he get news of emergencies on a smartphone?) or even bothers with a civilian identity (the only person Clark has a relationship with is his mother). While Routh has the physicality to convince that he's superhuman, it's noticeable that where Reeve and Welling could shift between personas, Routh needs the blue contact lenses, S-curl hairstyle, costume and wire effects to be Superman. In SUPERMAN RETURNS, Routh might as well be a CG animatic considering how little personality the script provided him to perform. Routh's Superman is a blank slate.

In contrast, Henry Cavill in MAN OF STEEL is filled with personality, arguably personality enough for five separate movies. He's the teenager itching to flee his small town; he's the wandering nomad keeping his distance from others; he's the guilt-tormented son who let his father die; he's the humble inheritor to the legacy of Jor-El; he's the god who surrenders to humanity in order to defend them. Kal-El of Krypton, Clark Kent of Kansas and Superman the superhero are different combinations of all these personas, but Cavill is quite definitive that he is from Kansas.

The 1986 incarnation of Superman began shifting towards this multi-faceted identity in 2000 as Superman began to explore his Kryptonian heritage more while identifying as American. The change cemented fully in 2006 with writers Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns fully committing to the multi-identity situation. This version of Superman is less likely to default to American culture and seeks to balance his alien and human heritage. This led to a brief arc where Superman renounced his American citizenship and Informant had that nervous breakdown with him shrieking pre-MAN OF STEEL that Henry Cavill couldn't possibly play Superman because Cavill was a foreigner.

It was a dark time for SLIDERS fandom. I like to think we made it through, and now we come to Tyler Hoechlin. Hoechlin is playing a very different Superman from the previous actors. Reeve, Welling, Routh and Cavill were all struggling to shoulder their responsibilities, but Hoechlin's Superman has a decade of experience and found his bliss.

He isn't juggling two legacies; he's settled into both. He isn't working through his identity confusion around Lois; they're a very happy couple. He isn't nervous about his relationships; he works closely with scientists to share Kryptonian technology with humanity but holds the DEO at a distance because they want to be ready to kill him. He keeps watch on Kara but keeps his distance with texts and instant messaging because he doesn't want to be a helicopter parent.

The result is a Superman who is at the end of his character arc with his demons vanquished and his conflicts resolved. Even when disgruntled with the DEO, Hoechlin's Superman is all civility and graciousness, making sure to shake hands and thank DEO staff for all their hard work. Hoechlin's Superman isn't designed for internal conflict or personal struggle, not because he's incapable of it, but because he's a supporting character who is Kara's role model.

This problem with this Superman, if you could even call it a problem, is that he can't sustain an ongoing TV series because he has resolved all his issues. But Hoechlin's Superman isn't meant to be a series lead anyway. His greatest superpower might be his superhuman relaxation. He has the effortless calm that would come with being bulletproof.

This is the most laid-back version of Superman ever onscreen. A Superman who has reconciled his dual origins isn't going to hit the notes that Informant prefers for this character.

The parts of Superman's legend to which Informant has a deep connection are not the only parts of Superman that exist. And it's not a crime that Tyler Hoechlin's Superman isn't Informant's Superman. It's not a weakness. It's not a flaw. Hoechlin's Superman is the perfect Superman for this SUPERGIRL series.

What it comes down to, really, is that Informant sees Superman as a self-portrait. The farm and the American heritage and the parents seem to be vital factors for him, and if he doesn't see himself in Superman, then it's not Superman to him. And I might not see my Superman in certain adaptations, but I would take it a step behind Informant's intensity.

So many writers and actors have written for and performed as this character and each one will have a very different take on the same source material. Zack Snyder, J. Michael Straczynski, Joss Whedon, Ali Adler, Jeph Loeb, Mark Waid, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Bruce Timm, Paul Dini and more each created their own individual Superman. Between them all, Superman has been an angsty teen, a loving father figure, a meatloaf addict, a vegetarian, a tormented soul, a cheery wisecracker, a hard-boiled reporter, a nervous milquetoast, a down-to-earth human and an unrelatable alien. Nobody should draw a box around any one incarnation as the only one that works.

My favourite incarnation is the Red Blue Blur of SMALLVILLE's eighth season and I would say this version is completely unworkable and should never be perpetuated in subsequent adaptations. My least favourite is Frank Miller's, although Clark in Seasons 2- 7 of SMALLVILLE is also pretty bad.

Weirdly, I don't even put Tyler Hoechlin on my list of favourite Supermans because he's quite distinctly *Supergirl's* Superman and he's best compared to Melissa Benoist rather than other Superman actors.

2018-12-18 17:14:30

Kyle Counts, Starlog #225, April 1996 wrote:

One challenge Tormé continually faces as one of the show’s producers is dealing with the cast’s morale. While everyone agrees that Sliders is a happy set, it is Derricks who points to a lone disgruntled voice among the principals.
“There have been reports that John rags the writing on the show a great deal,” he says somewhat sheepishly. ” The writing is not this, and the writing is not that, it’s horrible’ I think John says that only because he wants the show to work. I don’t think it has anything to do with him, per se. It’s about making the show work, and I think we all came in with that hope and that dream, because we all believed in the show.”
When asked about his role in Into the Mystic” Rhys-Davies smiles impishly, as if he’s holding back in the name of good sportsmanship. “My role in this episode is, uh…well, I’m there; I’m certainly there. I don’t see myself as a vehicle for the plot so much as… sort of walking furniture. It’s a very special episode written by the remarkable producer, writer and originator of our show, Mr. Tracy Tormé. And I’m sure I have a function.”
It’s obvious that Rhys-Davies’ ideas for his character haven’t met with overwhelming enthusiasm by the show’s co-creator. “Saving the world is out this year,” the actor says disappointedly. “Thy don’t want the Professor to save the world anymore. This is very much a make-or-break season, I think. And setting the actual direction that we want the show to go in has been a difficult one. There are those who see the show more as light comedy, and those, like myself, who would rather push it into a harder world of science fiction. At the moment, the light comedy people have the assent. Who knows? They may be right.”
Apprised of Rhys-Davies’ comments, Tormé decides to air his difference with the Sliders co-star. “I created the character, and I always saw Arturo as having dark shading. If you look at the pilot, there were many things that showed he’s a complex person with a dark side to him. John has always felt that the character should be heroic across the board, and that Quinn should learn from Arturo and be almost like Arturo’s protégé. I’ve never seen the show that way, and I still don’t.
“When working on Star Trek: The Next Generation, one of my complaints [about that show] was that everyone got along with each other at all times. I found that to be a little boring. So, I didn’t want this show to be about four people patting each other on the back every week. I wanted there to be some spark between the characters. I also wanted to make sure that Arturo didn’t step all over Quinn, because I think Quinn is more fundamental to the show.
“One of the interesting things about John is that at times he seems to have trouble distinguishing himself as a person from Arturo as a character. So if Arturo does something that John sees as cowardly or underhanded, John seems to take it personally. That’s what we’ve been dealing with for two seasons. The choices were to make it the Arturo and Friends go Sliding Show, or keep it what it is. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to give in to that. All I can do is ask John to be professional and to do the scripts as written, and when he has input, I’m happy to listen. He often adds good little touches to the scenes, but fundamentally, we have a difference of opinion about the character.”
Rhys-Davies wants it understood that his complaints about Sliders extend beyond his participation. “This show could be Fox and/or Universal’s Star Trek,” he remarks. “It could be the most considerable show they have, with a worldwide audience and a lifetime that will more than amply reward its makers. I do not think they fully understand the potential of this franchise.
“I think Sliders could be the most audacious show on television. It can go anywhere, any place, any time. It should have an edge like Quantum Leap or The X-Files. I believe that the balance of this show should be the pursuit of reason and man’s use of intelligence, understanding, intellectual excitement and passion in completely alien situation, rather than situations which simply lend themselves to light sitcom.”
The actor appears to have given considerable thought to his character’s function — or lack thereof — in Sliders. But today, at least, he doesn’t sound very optimistic about Arturo’s future. “Unless the Professor has a purpose, he could easily evolve into a cliché character, sort of the standard butt of jokes and things like that. That would be a sorry way to do it. I would certainly prefer not to do that. If you want the show to go in a certain direction, particularly if you’re aiming for a more youthful audience, it might actually be better to do with one less Slider. If I was producing this show, and if the professor truly didn’t have a function, it would be better to let him go and concentrate on the others.”
If the Professor sticks around, Rhys-Davies has his own ideas as to which of his qualities the writers should emphasize. “I think he should be the father figure to young Quinn, the one who’s pushing his student, whom we know had got more in him to go father than the Professor has. And yet I know there is a feeling that there should be more tension between the characters, to make it more interesting. I think this is a mistake. The conflict should come with the limits of our intelligence against completely haphazard and irrational occurrences in each parallel universe. The question for the writers is, do they want to make Arturo jealous of Quinn’s genius — which I think diminishes the character — or do they want to make the Professor a sort of teacher who expand the possibilities of his prodigy? Because that is part of the Professor’s genius. It’s an unresolved argument at present.”

The upshot of this seems to be that John didn't like Arturo being played as the butt of jokes (like being mistaken for Pavarotti and crowd surfing in "The King is Back"). He didn't like the Professor's occasionally dark or non-existent sense of morality (such as in "El Sid" and PTSS where he seems to steal Quinn's invention). He didn't like the Professor's occasional cowardice (see previous). He didn't like the Professor's jealousy towards Quinn. He felt Arturo should be completely heroic without flaws or failings.

The great irony of the situation: John got almost exactly the characterization he wanted in the season that he hated most, Season 3.

With the mild exception of "Rules of the Game" where he's defeatist and cruel and the teaser of "Murder Most Foul" where he lands in garbage, the Season 3 Arturo is a badass grandfather who can deliver babies and repair robots and beat up trained security guards and outrun motorcycles and knows exactly what to do in nearly every crisis with his only problem being that he's occasionally bad tempered and doesn't consider robots to be living beings.

Aside from being derided briefly and his final story where he gets shot and blown up after getting his brain sucked out, Arturo is entirely heroic with barely any failings or weaknesses, exactly as John wished during Seasons 1 - 2 -- which, I suppose, freed John up to focus his frustration on the stories around Arturo rather than the characterization of Arturo.

Quite hilariously, while Torme expressed great frustration towards David Peckinpah, Alan Barnette and Robert Greenblatt in interviews (without naming names), Torme didn't blame them for Arturo becoming so safe and bland. He blamed John, saying John had been pushing for Arturo to be "the wise old guy with no dark side" for two years and got his way in the end only to hate the show even more.

Temporal Flux (I think) once asked John to autograph a script for "Into the Mystic," and John grimly scrawled the following inscription: "God, I hated this script."

On a tangential note, at a 2012 convention in Toronto, some obsessive fan of whom we know nothing dared to ask John to describe the circumstances in which he was fired off SLIDERS. John gave the usual vitriolic responses, and then this daring fan whose name is lost to history proceeded to ask John which episode of SLIDERS he liked best.

John Rhys-Davies wrote:

Clearly, this man has balls! Which episode was my favorite? The last one.

2018-12-17 17:34:52

It's interesting. During Seasons 1 - 2, John described his role as "walking furniture" and ranted about what he felt was the poor quality of the scripts and his disdain for Arturo being written as cowardly or unheroic. Torme's view was that John needed to stop seeing an unflattering portrayal of Arturo as an unflattering portrayal of John. John was also unhappy about the sliders surviving the multiverse in Season 2 as opposed to a single Season 1 episode where they saved a whole planet. He also disliked the "light comedy" approach of Season 2.

However, after Torme left the show and Peckinpah took over and fired John, John took a completely different view in his latter interviews. "I think Tracy did a very nice job early on," he said after "The Exodus Part 2" had aired. Clearly, John saw the Season 3 changes and realized what Torme had been holding at bay -- except Epstein would have us think FOX didn't interfere with SLIDERS at all?

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3,181 Reply by ireactions 2019-01-25 09:10:20

Re: American Politics: Discuss and Debate (3,520 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

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Re: Supernatural (267 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

3,183 Reply by ireactions 2019-01-24 17:51:06

Re: Star Trek in Film and TV (and The Orville, too!) (746 replies, posted in Sliders Bboard)

3,184 Reply by ireactions 2019-01-23 15:30:14

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3,189 Reply by ireactions 2019-01-21 21:32:14

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