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That's fantastic! I probably won't see it in theatres. I have enough to keep me busy at home and I won't even be through my queue by the time that movie hits home video. Honestly, the only movies I've seen in theatres in recent years are AVENGERS movies.

I don't see why it's unreasonable for Deegan to repeatedly overpower Superman -- Deegan clearly rewrote reality to be stronger than the real Superman.

I also think that we should probably ascribe any and every continuity error ever to Deegan's interference with reality.

The behind the scenes reason for some of the peculiarities of this episode -- LEGENDS needed to offer some rationale for why the LEGENDS characters weren't involved in ELSEWORLDS, so they had the Legends as we know them erased from existence for a week. Due to a shorter episode order this season shortening their schedule and actor availabilities, LEGENDS couldn't schedule the shutdown days needed to participate in the crossover and still complete their full 16 episodes.

You'll recall that the first crossover, INVASION, featured Oliver, Barry and Kara prominently in the first installment only to reduce them to glimpses and cameos with the next three episodes. Production filmed all episodes of INVASION within a week, within the normal one-episode-a-week schedule, and it was impossible to film any more material with the core three actors within a single week. Recognizing this issue, CRISIS ON EARTH-X set up a different schedule where they filmed all four installments over the course of a month, scheduling days where the shows would stop production and devote their resources entirely to the crossover, so each show produced one episode when they would normally have made four. LEGENDS couldn't do that this year.

From a creative standpoint -- the characterization of this LEGENDS episode made absolutely no sense. I confess that the fuzzy logic of LEGENDS is a constant; after three seasons of the Wave Rider operating on some sort of zero-point, self-renewing fuel source with a fabricator for all food and materials and items, they're suddenly worried about an accountant performing an audit of their budget? The replacements for the Time Masters, a force that existed outside the timestream in the distant future, is now a branch of the US federal government? All fine and good, but suggesting that Nate and Ray or Sarah and Gideon would go on homicidal rampages over the deaths of teammates is absurd. They've lost teammates before: Professor Stein, Rip Hunter, Leonard Snart -- so the idea that losing anyone in Season 4 would turn the survivors into murdering lunatics is a non-starter.

It's at this point that the logic of the episode seemed to degrade, almost as though some cataclysm of reality in the distant future involving a dimensionally detached scientist and his efforts to combine realities had reached backwards into the past, breaking sense and reason itself within the universe and causing the boys or the girls to become an absurd parody of 80s genre schlock -- but it's more likely that this was the result of Dr. John Deegan scrambling reality with the Book of Destiny and causing such havoc that even the Time Bureau couldn't detect or contain the damage.

It’s as the ancient saying goes: “Give someone a superhero comic book and you entertain them for ten minutes. Teach someone to live without superhero comics and you save them from a lifetime of materialism and poverty.”

I dunno. Whether I like it or not, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is oriented not around the very excellent DAREDEVIL series, not around AGENTS OF SHIELD and not around AGENT CARTER or the MARVEL ONE SHOTS or the tie-in comics. The core MCU content is the AVENGERS movies and I wonder what they'll do with AVENGERS ENDGAME. Here's the trailer.

https://www.newsarama.com/43019-avenger … ailer.html

Yup! And it’s likely HR Wells holding William in this dream world and HR will reveal himself as being Abra Kadabra. Any day now. Temporal Flux is always right about such things.

I wonder if WB actually kicked Snyder when he was down. From what I can tell, Snyder left JUSTICE LEAGUE. He had to. Nobody should be editing and directing a major motion picture (or Season 3 of SLIDERS) under such circumstances. His daughter killed herself, a horrific, traumatizing event that put Snyder in a terrible place.

When David Peckinpah's son, Garrett, suddenly died of meningistis, Peckinpah didn't take the time to heal or mourn; he accepted stewardship of SLIDERS in Season 3 and never recovered from his torment. He dulled it with rage, affairs, heroin and cocaine. His grief never went away, he never learned to live with it or past it and in the end, it killed him.

Snyder decided to leave. When Whedon took over, he was in an impossible situation. Asked to complete a film he didn't really agree with. I think Informant himself would note: it’s not about how choice A is right and choice B is wrong: it's instead about committing to the choices one makes with style, craft, grace and conviction. Except in Whedon's case, many of these choices had been made and he was being asked to change some but not others.

I think it is very difficult for another creator to come in and complete someone else's vision when they have a completely oppositional style, and to complete it with pieces that have already been produced. If WB didn't want Whedon to be Whedon, they should have hired someone else, gotten Adam Kane or Greg Beeman or Allan Arkush (HEROES) or promoted Snyder's director of photography -- but it's clear that they wanted the AVENGERS director to make a Snyder movie more a Whedon movie and Whedon did what he was paid to do.

From what I can tell, the parademons feeding on fear was not part of the original storyline. Instead, the plot was that the parademons could consume and assimilate human beings and turn them into parademons.

This is just conjecture based on bits and pieces of what's been leaked. I think that that in the Snyder version, Superman, still unsteady after his resurrection, would be attacked by Steppenwolf's hordes and nearly corrupted into an agent of Apokolips. But during the process, Superman would have a vision of the Knightmare future -- Lois dead, the world a devastated wasteland, Batman fighting a losing rebellion, Superman under the control of the anti-life equation -- and Superman's horror would allow him to cast off the parademon infection. Superman would defeat Steppenwolf but now be struck by a new vision of the future -- the coming of Darkseid, the fear that the anti-life equation is suppressed but not gone and could turn him into a soldier for the other side in the war to be fought in JUSTICE LEAGUE II.

But Snyder left JUSTICE LEAGUE and it became clear that he needed a clean break with the DCEU and would never direct JUSTICE LEAGUE II. Whedon was instructed to conclude without a cliffhanger within the footage Snyder had shot with limited resources for reshoots.

The best Whedon could do: he shot a new opening in the film to indicate that the parademons feed on fear, something that was not a part of the original story. Whedon wrote in a line of dialogue for Steppenwolf saying his demons were hungering to feed on the humans and their fear. Then Whedon shot the end sequence where Steppenwolf, now frightened, is attacked by his own minions and in his defeat is suddenly removed from Earth.

The parademons feeding on fear -- it's not sufficiently maintained throughout the film, existing only in the opening, one line of dialogue and then the ending. The failure to address the Knightmare sequence in the previous film is peculiar. The third Mother Box being forgotten on the roof of a car is an awkward 'fix' where the original course of events couldn't be maintained. But there's other stuff I'd defend: Bruce using the same logic he had for killing Superman to argue in favour of resurrecting him is a beautiful moment of character development.

As for the DCEU, there clearly wasn't a lot of planning. MAN OF STEEL was intended as the start to a Superman film series, not a DC universe. But it was a respectable hit instead of a global blockbuster. The thinking was adding Batman and Wonder Woman could raise earnings. The results have been mixed.

Just as JUSTICE LEAGUE fails to entirely match BVS, WONDER WOMAN is also at odds with it. BVS shows Wonder Woman claiming she walked away from humanity, but WONDER WOMAN had her inspired by it; Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins, developing the character in their film, found they had moved in a different direction in BVS, meaning BVS had introduced Diana without a clear direction in mind. JUSTICE LEAGUE attempts to rationalize the discrepency saying Wonder Woman never abandoned humanity but avoided leadership and notoriety.

At every point in the DCEU, films have been made in an extremely improvisational fashion. BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN was re-edited to shrink Superman's role; JUSTICE LEAGUE was reworked from what was clearly a superhero horror film with jokes into more of an AVENGERS movie.

Given that in the aftermath of JUSTICE LEAGUE's box office, we have no JUSTICE LEAGUE II, no MAN OF STEEL II, no Ben Affleck BATMAN film, DC Films division producer Jon Berg dismissed, DC chief Geoff Johns demoted, it's safe to say JUSTICE LEAGUE didn't do well. It's a simple metric that a film must earn three times its production budget to turn a profit and JUSTICE LEAGUE having cost $300 million to earn $660 million, the film's short by $240 million.

If the first AVENGERS movie had earned $660 million on its $220 million budget, it would have been considered an adequate (but not spectacular) return. But it cracked 1.5 billion -- and yet, Perlmutter fought any budget increases for the subsequent films. Financially, DC has been spending too much before it had won its sought after billion dollar success and the Marvel film division was spending too little after it had proven to be a billion dollar earner.

And yet... when the Netflix shows were first announced, Informant noted the costly New York City location filming and how he doubted the project could justify its costs. He was dead wrong for the first season of DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES and PUNISHER but he has proven correct for LUKE CAGE, IRON FIST, DEFENDERS and the subsequent seasons of DAREDEVIL and JJ. The viewership fell drastically after the double bomb of IRON FIST and DEFENDERS and Netflix no longer wants to pay for any of it.

Anyway. Marvel Entertainment (TV, comics under Perlmutter) has the Marvel Unlimited service for digital comic books. They could conceivably reinvest in that and restructure it to give the TV division a new home, but currently, their business model has been to shop shows to networks and streaming services who then pay to produce and air it.

However, Perlmutter brought Marvel Studios (film) into existence with the view that they shouldn't be selling film rights (and profits) to other studios when they could make the films themselves and keep the earnings. Perhaps he might consider that Marvel Entertainment needs to start airing their own shows...

I don't think Perlmutter is necessarily a problem in that he's been isolated to the TV department which is doing pretty well? He has no influence on the film division anymore.

There are things about Perlmutter that I think are admirable and things that aren't. His penny pinching was, during the first phase of standalone movies, a pragmatic process to the successes of IRON MAN, THOR, CAPTAIN AMERICA and AVENGERS.

He set a budget that forced producers and directors to work out a clear filming schedule, effective reshoots, extensive use of sets and locations to get as much money onscreen as possible -- and he refused to engage in the massive amounts of waste of other blockbuster films. This didn't work for me personally in that AVENGERS seems to be set almost entirely on the Helicarrier, but the world at large seemed fine with it.

In contrast, movies like JUSTICE LEAGUE overpay their actors with far more money than anyone could spend and unnecessary luxuries. Perlmutter mandated hiring newcomers like Evans and Hemsworth or diminished stars like Downey Jr. for their lower rates. He also refused to pay entourage travel expenses, allowing only one free travel companion per star. WB hired Ben Affleck and the Ben Affleck machine. Perlmutter demanded advance planning to minimize reshoots and cut down on unnecessary set days and location filming. JUSTICE LEAGUE blew hundreds of millions on sequences that aren't in the film. Perlmutter had premieres catered by Subway. The bulk of Marvel's money went to what's actually on the screen.

However, after the success of AVENGERS, Perlmutter continued to treat Marvel Film like a startup company, refusing to expand budgets even though the return on investment was now a certainty. This led to a massive fight over CIVIL WAR which originally had Downey Jr. booked for a few weeks of filming in a very small role for Tony Stark and a sizable role for Iron Man (in the armour, performed mostly through voiceover). Downey Jr. expressed the wish to play a larger role and receive a larger salary, feeling that Marvel Film's success could now afford it. Producer Kevin Feige felt the same way.

Perlmutter ordered Feige to fire Downey Jr. for asking for more money (even though he was offering to do more work). Perlmutter ordered that Tony Stark be written out of the script. Feige protested as CIVIL WAR was the story of Captain America vs. Iron Man.

Disney, observing Feige's success and uncomfortable with Perlmutter's bizarre behaviour, demoted Perlmutter to managing Marvel's comic book and television properties and promoted Feige to run the film division.

There's a lot to admire about Perlmutter when Marvel was struggling through a bankruptcy, when Marvel was trying to launch films after they'd sold Spider-Man to Sony and X-Men and Fantastic Four to FOX. But once Marvel Film was a success, Perlmutter's philosophy didn't make any sense. I haven't seen the IMAX INHUMANS (or any INHUMANS), but IMAX publically apologized for the cheapness of the production.

Perlmutter's attitude makes sense for a startup situation and I think his money management is the right approach for TV (but definitely not IMAX). TV is a factory of limited budgets and tight schedules; Perlmutter's obsessive planning and pennywise tactics are a good fit. You wouldn't see Perlmutter blowing the bulk of AGENTS OF SHIELD's season budget on, say, hiring Roger Daltrey and his band to perform a rock concert with filming to be done between binge drinking sessions. You'd never see lax safety standards leading to an actor dying while filming a car chase -- not because Perlmutter cares about safety, but he certainly cares about not wasting money on getting sued and fined. (That last one's conjecture, but work with me.)

I can also appreciate how Perlmutter, despite being an ardent Trump supporter and friend, permitted AGENTS OF SHIELD to actively mock the Trump administration in various lines of dialogue. Without Perlmutter, Marvel Film and Marvel TV wouldn't have ever gotten off the ground, but Marvel Film needed to fly free without him and maybe Marvel TV would benefit from the same -- if only to get its content onto the Marvel Film streaming platform.

As of this writing, Informant is flat out wrong about the Netflix shows moving to Disney's streaming service. DAREDEVIL, JESSICA JONES, LUKE CAGE, PUNISHER, IRON FIST and DEFENDERS were all projects from Marvel TV made in a co-production deal with Netflix. The Disney streaming service is being driven by Marvel Film which, despite branding, has little to no professional collaboration with Marvel TV right now.

We need to understand that Marvel Film and Marvel TV are currently two separate entities due to an extremely acrimonious divorce. One side got the movies and the other side got the TV shows.

Marvel Film's billion dollar earnings allow it to dictate the course of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Marvel TV is a lower-tier branch run by a former Marvel Film executive who was ousted from the movie division but retained control of the TV properties. Essentially, Marvel TV is like Pocket Books for STAR TREK, doing media tie-ins that just happen to be TV shows rather than novels.

However, despite the internal division, Netflix views a Disney streaming service as direct competition and is understandably disinclined to produce their competitions TV shows. Marvel Film has no involvement in the Netflix shows or the ABC shows (well, just one now) or the Hulu shows; they have about as much interest in these properties as J.J. Abrams would have in STAR WARS novels when directing the next movie except in this case, the Marvel Film/Marvel TV relationship is coldly indifferent on a good day and hostile on most days.

For this reason, it is currently not in the cards for the Disney streaming service to feature Peggy Carter, any Netflix shows or any Marvel TV content.

Could that change? Right now, I'm mildly astonished that Marvel Film hasn't simply ordered the ABC, Netflix and Hulu content to be stricken from the record, but the Marvel TV head seems to own too much Disney stock to be entirely dismissed at this point, so Marvel Film has settled for icily ignoring the TV shows.

Marvel TV content isn't going to be moving from Netflix to any platform led by Marvel Film. If Marvel TV wants a fourth season of DAREDEVIL or a second season of DEFENDERS, it's going to have to find a network or streaming service that will tolerate working for their own competition or come up with a Marvel TV streaming service of its own.

Any analysis that treats Marvel Film and Marvel TV as the same entity is simply misinformed.

I ordered Season 3 off eBay for $7.81, but then -- well, I was converting some old PC game discs to ISO files for hard drive storage. One disc wouldn't copy, but then I gave it a cleaning using a cloth dampened with lens cleaning fluid and it worked. It occurred to me to do the same with the inoperative Season 3 disc rather than just using water -- and now "The Guardian" is playing fine off the DVD. I've asked the eBay seller to cancel the order and hopefully they'll do it or I'll have the dubious honour of owning two sets of the season from hell.

DAREDEVIL has been cancelled.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/29/181 … -iron-fist

Sad, but not surprised.

I dunno. I feel like the format requires that he and I aren't actually in physical proximity, just texting each other.

Sorry for forgetting that BIRDS OF PREY was likely to go ahead. It slipped my mind. Weird, because I love the TV show.

And now, having stood up for DOCTOR WHO, I must condemn it. “Kerblam,” the seventh episode of the Chibnall era, is a well-paced, exciting story that balances all the cast members well and structures its story beautifully except it has the Doctor confronting a fictional version of Amazon, a corporation that abuses and exploits its workers to exhaustion and injury and leaves them homeless and broken and encourages sociopathic sabotage among its workforce – and the Doctor ends up delivering a lecture to the one labour activist in the episode. The one advocate for labour rights, fair wages and responsible management of workers is presented as a mass-murdering terrorist whom the Doctor promptly blows up before leaving the universe safe for Amazon to carry on its horrors.

This is so wrong it’s hard to know where to begin. The Doctor has been a figure of revolution and anarchy since 1963, bringing down establishment structures as a force of chaos who just happens to be against the monsters. She has always been an anti-authoritarian figure and to see the Doctor defend corporations’ right to grossly mistreat their workers for a pittance of a salary is an absurd depiction of a character who has historically always brought bureaucracy and capitalist empires crashing down. It’s one thing to have the Doctor refuse to intervene in historical situations, but to have the Doctor confront Amazon in space (dubbed “Kerblam!”) and take no issue with it is a betrayal of DOCTOR WHO.

The strange thing is that it’s probably not even intentional. DOCTOR WHO, a product of a massive corporation whose streaming rights were sold to the real-life Amazon, is probably not in a position to show the Doctor toppling Jeff Bezos’ castle with her sonic screwdriver. DOCTOR WHO, having cast a woman, a Pakastani actress, a black man and a senior citizen as leads, is probably not intending to have the Doctor defend corporate abuses.

More likely, DOCTOR WHO, having to appeal to its whole audience and not just left-wing liberals, attempted a polite middle ground: the climax of the episode has the Doctor declaring that the problem is not the Amazon system (offering the lowest prices for its products in the speediest delivery at maximum profit). The problem is how people use the system, whether it’s to pay workers the least the company can get away with to maximize its bottom line or our labour activist who decides to use the Amazon-style delivery system to send bombs to the customers.

Now, this is an argument I have a lot of time for. Tom Cruise made this argument in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - ROGUE NATION. Quinn made a similar argument in "World Killer," saying, "The universe has no conscience, so WE have to."

Except the only person the Doctor feels the need to argue against, stop, trounce, confront and defeat is the labour activist and then space-Amazon makes some noise about hiring more humans and fewer robots and the Doctor is off. At no point does the Doctor confront space-Jeff Bezos; no analogue even appears in the story. And the problem here is a lack of imagination.

A Steven Moffat edited version of this script introduces space-Bezos and has the Doctor rewire the space-Amazon AI so that space-Bezos can only ever live in the conditions on the wages of his lowest-paid employees, forcing him to improve conditions. A Robert Holmes edited version of “Kerblam!” has the Doctor drown space-Bezos in so much bureaucracy that he’s forced to hire and retain a decently paid workforce just to manage. A Russell T. Davies version of this script has the Doctor blow space-Bezos up (he was less imaginative).

But a Chibnall edited script? Well, in attempting not to say anything too provocative or offensive to any particular party, Chibnall has inadvertently presented the Doctor as an enforcer for the establishment who keeps people who protest mistreatment in line while declaring labour rights to be terrorist ideals. I don’t think this is deliberate; it’s more likely incompetence. It’s clumsiness. It is a massive screw-up and it’s not the first. DOCTOR WHO has often made terrible mistakes. At times, the Doctor has been written as racist, abusive, militaristic, spineless, needlessly violent emotionally dysfunctional – and over time, such portrayals are left behind as errors to be explained or forgotten. “Kerblam!” is one such story.

It seems to me like WB is keeping DC films in development without actually proceeding to make any they can't back out of aside from WONDER WOMAN II, AQUAMAN, SHAZAM and the JOKER movie. There's a lot of scripting and considering for BIRDS OF PREY, BATGIRL, NIGHTWING, THE FLASH, THE BATMAN (which may or may not have Affleck) -- but what it comes down to is that WB is unwilling to attempt a TRANSFORMERS-level superhero project after JUSTICE LEAGUE crashed so hard even Informant wouldn't defend the financials. Superhero movies that earn 600 million dollars at box office should be made for no more than 100 million dollar budgets and preferably half that.

In terms of what makes financial sense, WB are waiting, I think. They're going to wait for WONDER WOMAN II, AQUAMAN and SHAZAM's performances before engaging in anything beyond non-committal development. Given how badly JUSTICE LEAGUE did, I wonder if the DCEU is simply going to be waiting until enough time has passed to start over. They may make a third WONDER WOMAN, a second AQUAMAN, another SHAZAM -- building on what's already been built without throwing too much more money after what's been lost. I doubt they'll want to make THE BATMAN or MAN OF STEEL II on the blockbuster level that Affleck and Cavill level salaries would demand. The DCEU with regards to Superman and Batman seems to be going the way of the SUPERMAN RETURNS sequel -- it's just not enough of an earner to press forward on this sort of financial scale.

When the LOST IN SPACE 1998 movie failed, there were no sequels, but because there was going to be some time between the next iteration, there were some novels set after the film -- just to keep the copyright going and to earn some revenue. I don't see WB demoting the DCEU to novels, but it's going to be some sort of scaled back exploitation that won't be the bold, continuing adventures of Superman and Batman.

I imagine the DCEU closing out with a final WONDER WOMAN film before making a new attempt at a live action DC Universe. I wonder if it would spin out of the Arrowverse, but the Arrowverse probably has only another 4 - 5 years left before it too is laid to rest with a good finale.

The future may be in the DC streaming service -- TV level productions that, like DOCTOR WHO, eventually make the leap to the big screen. Thirteen episode shows at 1 - 2 million dollars an episode before a $30 million feature film emerging from the shows that can make 200 - 500 million dollars at box office and be considered a strong return on investment. Perhaps in 2022, when enough time has passed, a new Superman and Batman will debut on the small screen and lay groundwork for leaping to the large.

I really enjoy LEGENDS because of the cast, and Ray Palmer is my favourite character on the show. I think Brandon Routh is great. What follows is armchair psychoanalysis regarding Brandon Routh, the way I theorized as to Jerry O'Connell and David Peckinpah and James Gunn's inner thinking. It's theory. Don't take it seriously. I said don't take it seriously. Why are you taking it seriously? Stop taking it seriously!
 
Ray Palmer's character on LEGENDS is one of the high points for me, but there's clearly been a shift from ARROW with Ray almost a different character. Yet, Ray's character rings true for me because of Brandon Routh's performance. Acting isn't about pretending; it's about finding your truth and presenting it in a fictional context, and Ray's trajectory mirrors Routh's.
 
Routh started out as a jobbing actor who worked on soap operas and tended bar and sometimes played bartenders in soap operas before getting laid off soap operas and just being a bartender. Due to auditioning for shows produced by McG, he managed to get an audition for McG's SUPERMAN and the audition videos were kept when Warner Bros. went with another director. Routh was cast as Superman, his career going from zero to blockbuster. 
 
The resulting movie was trounced at box office by romcoms and pirate movies. But Routh was told he'd be in a sequel; the movie had done adequately. Then three years passed, his contract expired and Warner Bros. made no move to renew it and now clearly planned to move on from him.

Routh was quietly shattered by this: he had expected the next decade of his life to be acting as the custodian of Christopher Reeve's legacy. He'd thought, at least, that playing Superman would lead to many other offers. But he didn't get any other offers.
 
He had to go auditioning again and he confessed in a podcast that he was embarrassed at going from playing Superman to TV guest star roles. Routh was depressed, it affected his work. Looking at his acting, it's like he was afraid to make strong, individual choices that might offend anyone and cost him another job (even though he couldn't have done anything differently to see SUPERMAN RETURNS get a sequel). 
 
You can see an anxiety-depression complex in his work on CHUCK and in ARROW's third season: he's earnest and sincere, but it's the only note he hits, making his characterization wooden. He's afraid to embrace the words and make them his own. He's also extremely low energy; he's not enthusiastic, he isn't impassioned. In real life, Routh was tired; onscreen in ARROW, it came off as Ray being a detached, distant, mysterious scientist, haunted by the murder of his fiancee. At the end of Season 3, he went missing and Season 4 revealed that he'd been trapped in isolation for months.
 
This led to LEGENDS where Routh's performance suddenly changed, as did Ray. Stepping aboard the Wave Rider, Ray became hyperactively enthused about time travel, adventure and superheroics, diving into situations impulsively and constantly making bad situations worse before learning to make them better. 

His high energy was an irritant to the team; his screwups every week led to Reddit starting what the community termed a "Fuckup Counter" for Ray. He was a handsome hero who made a lot of mistakes and he had to struggle and persevere to triumph and needed a lot of help from his friends. He had no ego; he always accepted responsibility for his errors and took his spot on the chore wheel. It's hard to imagine the suit and tuxedo Ray of ARROW doing laundry on LEGENDS. 
 
Onscreen, there was no direct explanation for this change, although Routh's performance suggested that Ray's months of isolation had caused him to regress to a more childish state. After all, the ATOM suit had proven to be a damp squib in the tech community; he'd come to rebuild Star City only for it to carry on without him. All this had eroded Ray's previous superiority complex. 
 
The result is a character I find deeply endearing: an excitable, charmingly earnest and sweet manchild who screws up. A former mogul who's been cut down to size and accepts his diminished stature with a mix of humiliation and grace. And a vastly improved performance from Brandon Routh who has embraced this flawed and lovable character with gusto. Routh is a lifelong gamer and fantasy fan, and he really sold Ray's joy at seeing dinosaurs and the Wild West and the 60s and space.
 
The real reason Ray Palmer changed, however, is that Brandon Routh changed. By the time LEGENDS started, his son was two years old and Routh realized that his depression over Superman was affecting his family life and career. He accepted that he had to audition for roles; he wouldn't be offered leading parts based on SUPERMAN RETURNS. He came to grips with how he would never play Superman again and he would have to find some other life-defining character to play. He understood that becoming Superman had meant skipping over guest-roles, supporting roles and roles as part of ensembles -- roles he would have to not only accept but embrace to rebuild his career.

As he emerged from his depression, Routh also became obsessed with nutrition, discovering the peculiar beverage that is "Bulletproof Coffee," a grammatically curious name for a combination of grass-fed butter and coconut oil into coffee from mold-free beans as well as a high-protein and fat diet with low carb intake. Routh's physical health went on the upswing, his energy levels ramped up significantly and the once withdrawn and quiet Routh became a manic chatterbox. The LEGENDS writers proceeded to rewrite Ray with Routh's new hypercaffeinated personality.
 
In real life, Routh is known to never shut up about Bulletproof Coffee leading to the Season 3 joke where Nate only realizes Ray's been kidnapped after a morning has passed without Ray espousing the benefits of this beverage.
 
Ray Palmer in the third season of ARROW was a deeply depressed person over the death of his fiance just as Brandon Routh was quietly miserable for years over losing his franchise. Depression doesn't always manifest in binge drinking (Jerry O'Connell) or ugly rape jokes (James Gunn) or self-detruction (David Peckinpah). Sometimes, it's just low energy, low enthusiasm, and a low sense of self-worth. And then there's the gleeful joy of a new begnning; just as Routh accepted his career had taken a backwards, Ray became a less mature but happier figure on LEGENDS and took a new path forward.
 
There's a really strong moment in Season 2 where Ray has to destroy the ATOM suit to save the day and he's trying to help Nate trigger his powers. Ray agonizes that by destroying the suit, he is destroying the only thing that makes him special -- a moment that Routh played with such heartfelt grief and loss, undoubtedly drawing on how it felt when Warner Bros. let his Superman contract expire.
 
There's also Season 3 opening with Ray, off the Wave Rider, working as an intern at a dating site and being mocked for having once been a big shot in tech. It isn't remotely realistic; Ray Palmer would have still had his profits and savings. But it's *true* -- that is how Routh felt auditioning to play Cop #3 characters after he'd played Superman. 
 
And that's why I really like Ray Palmer on LEGENDS. Ray is a man who, in losing his fiancee and his company and then the ATOM suit, lost what gave his life meaning, just as Brandon Routh lost what gave him purpose and reason for being when he lost the Superman role. And both men had to rebuild themselves and create new lives. Yes, there are some breaks with strict character continuity, but this character rings true because it's Brandon Routh's truth.

Is anyone as bemused as I am by Ray Palmer’s character trajectory from aloof, distantly mysterious scientist on ARROW to hapless, awkward goofball on LEGENDS?

I agreed with Informant on this, so I'm either having a mid-life crisis or I'm sick. (I am a bit feverish.) The only real point of disagreement -- BABYLON 5 was excellent in the era in which it was made where shows that attempted ongoing arcs, political allegory, social satire and character development tended to end up like, well, SLIDERS. Since then, the highly advanced stage theatre of the show has aged poorly and it's a product of its time.

It's strange -- Informant has actually seen more of B5 than I have, which is to say I watched maybe four episodes of the final season and then skipped ahead to the finale and have never felt the need to watch what I missed.

The actresses were extremely flirtatious throughout the Wayward backdoor pilot episode from their hospital meeting to comparing scars to holding hands. The screenwriter confirmed on Twitter that the Claire/Kaia relationship was intended to be romantic. I'm told that Claire wasn't in this episode because the actress's quote has gone up so the show needs to focus on her whenever she appears to justify her rate.

I love Informant. I never lived before I met Informant. But Informant's politics are very much opposed to mine -- while we're somewhat closer in terms of storytelling preferences. Let's be clear: I believe Nazis are in dire need of being punched. But I also believe that SUPERGIRL's scripts are in dire need of being edited so that the viewpoints apply to their fictional world as opposed to our very different reality.

Despite Informant and I being opposed on immigration and refugees and asylum seekers, I think Informant has a very fair point here (and only here). I would much prefer it if SUPERGIRL would tell its story of alien immigrants, aliens dealing with oppression and hate crimes, humans fearing aliens for their superpowers -- and let the audience decide for themselves how much of Earth 38 to apply to our own Earth.

Instead, 4.01 and 4.02 have copy-pasted left-wing views of immigration (which are my own) into a fictional context that actively contradicts the narrative that humans are unreasonably afraid of aliens despite three seasons of alien attacks. Earth 38 is not an effective metaphor for America; superpowered aliens are not an effective representation of refugees -- and it'd be best if SUPERGIRL scored its points within its own fictional reality instead of declaring there to be a 1:1 correlation between the fictional world and the real world that clearly isn't there.

In the 80s, a young writer named Andrew Cartmel was joining DOCTOR WHO as the new script editor. He recounts the interview before the job with producer John Nathan-Turner. "He asked me, ‘If there’s one thing you could do with the show, what would it be?’, and I said ‘Overthrow the government’, because I was young and I didn’t like the way things were going at the time. John said ‘Well you can’t do that, the most you can do on DOCTOR WHO is say that people with purple and green skin are all equal’, which we then proceeded to do." Nathan-Turner probably had a point that a fantasy-adventure TV show probably deals in far simpler situations than the real world.

That's part of why I thought 4.03 was so much better than the first two episodes of SUPERGIRL this year; 4.03 wasn't copy-pasting the life of a real-life terrorist into Agent Liberty. It was specifically about Agent Liberty's story and how his fear, trauma and paranoia made bigotry and hatred go from being unthinkable to seemingly reasonable and rational, and how from his point of view, he is a man of integrity and principle in a world gone mad, and you can take any of that or none of that into your own life.

I have a question for Informant.

You saw the truth about Bryan Singer when I was still unable to wrap my head around it. You see the hypocrisy in Hollywood as people rally around Rose McGowan and condemn Harvey Weinstein but applaud and sign petitions for Roman Polansky. (There's also McGowan's disgusting transphobia.)

Why do you defend Donald Trump's self-confessed sexual assaults?

I'd just like to remind anyone reading that the views of Grizzlor are not the views of Sliders.tv. All things being equal, Grizzlor once insisted that Allison Mack could not be a sex trafficking, harem-managing cultist for a psychopath. Boy, did Grizzlor ever look silly after that. (Grizzlor, I'm sorry, but I gotta be fair.)

Admittedly, the (political) views of Grizzlor are the views of ireactions, but ireactions is widely regarded as the village lunatic of the SLIDERS community. Grizzlor and ireactions have often been flat out wrong. ireactions, for example, once bought stock in Blackberry (what a backfire!).

While Grizzlor and I are of the same mind (on this subject), we do not represent the consensus of Sliders.tv and as far as I can tell, there is no consensus in this community which cannot even agree on an episode order for Season 2 of SLIDERS.

SLIDERS is noticeably, at nearly every point of its run, completely out of sync with 90s storytelling sensibilities.

Seasons 1 - 2 feature untrained civilian adventurers in stark contrast to most action-adventure shows focusing on protagonists with military or law enforcement backgrounds. Season 3 and Season 4 shift towards a more militaristic cast (Rembrandt in the Navy, Captain Maggie Beckett the former intelligence officer/fighter pilot/soldier, Quinn as a mythic chosen one and a refugee soldier), but the massive cast changes are most unlike the average 90s show that largely hung onto all their central players.

The bizarre shifts in tone and format are also unlike SLIDERS' contemporaries: across the first nine seasons of THE X-FILES is a basic adherence to formula that is absent with SLIDERS going from alt-history celebrity stories to action-adventure to monster movies to the Sci-Fi Channel years.

And in terms of recasting/regenerating, SLIDERS is noticeably (if accidentally) ahead of the curve. SLIDERS introduced Quinn's female double in Season 3, inadvertently laying ground to presenting a different performer as Quinn should the need arise. DOCTOR WHO did something similar (and deliberately): after decades of the Doctor identifying as a man, the show brought back the character of the Master, a fellow Time Lord like the Doctor -- but who had regenerated into a woman but retained largely the same personality. The show later had a recurring character, also a Time Lord, regenerate into a woman and declare that her previous male incarnation had been the only time she'd ever been a man. The Doctor would later declare (somewhat facetiously) that Time Lords were (ideally) above gender roles.

But SLIDERS achieved the same thing so offhandedly and effortlessly, by establishing Quinn's female double with the character receiving near-universal acclaim and appreciation from the fans. Fans had *already* accepted Zoe as Quinn Mallory and would have welcomed her happily as Jerry O'Connell's successor for Season 5. It's a tragically missed opportunity among SLIDERS' many squandered chances.

Damron said that the merging of Quinn and Mallory was inspired by DOCTOR WHO's regeneration concept.

I was watching the DOCTOR WHO premiere again in which the Doctor discovers that she is now a woman. And then it occurred to me (probably not for the first time) that rather than staggering drunkenly behind DOCTOR WHO, SLIDERS should really have taken this chance to be ahead of the curve. "The Unstuck Man" should have opened with Rembrandt and Maggie coming out of the vortex with Quinn missing -- and then they'd come across a dark-haired woman whom Rembrandt would only vaguely remember. "Who are you?" she asks.

"Who are we?" Rembrandt says. "Who the hell're you?"

"I'm Quinn!" says the woman. "Quinn Mallory." Rembrandt and Maggie are disbelieving, but then the woman displays a flash of memory regarding "Roads Taken" and Rembrandt suddenly recalls having briefly seen this woman once -- a female alternate of Quinn. Season 5 should have been Quinn merged with his female alternate as played by Zoe McLellan. The dual identity would be less of an issue; this female double was a braindead coma patient used in an experiment. And I think ideally, Quinn should have protested any effort to change back into a male body; s/he'd find being a woman so fascinating and such a new perspective that s/he'd be thrilled to go with it. That way, we wouldn't be perpetually waiting for Jerry O'Connell to come back.

SLIDERS could have leapt ahead of DOCTOR WHO instead of lagging behind it.

Well, DAREDEVIL in Season 3 was awesome. Each episode had a meaningful purpose and identity of its own while forwarding the season-long arc. The choice to have Matt go back to a makeshift mask and a black sweater and pants was striking and showed how far the character had fallen. The darkness of Season 3 felt well-earned, simply depicting the corruptibility and fallibility of our institutions and establishments.
DAREDEVIL has Matt forced to consider if his deathless vigilantism is as worthless as the legal system that Wilson Fisk has co-opted and every time Matt tries to grudgingly accept the rules of law, he's flattened by a villain who fully acknowledges law and process but solely to manipulate them.

The use of imagery from iconic DAREDEVIL storylines like BORN AGAIN and GUARDIAN DEVIL serve a nice nods to the source material while creating a sense of terror for those who know that this is how Karen Page died in the comics and this is how Matt's career was destroyed. The secret origin of Karen Page is done with nuance and weight. And the finale leaves DAREDEVIL in a good place for a conclusion should the Netflix era be ending, most unlike IRON FIST's finale.

The only issue I had with Season 3 – there were points where it didn't make sense for Karen to be facing danger alone when she should and would have called her heavily armed and deeply devoted friend Frank Castle for help.

****

I am very much in the minority on this, but I felt that LUKE CAGE's conclusion at Season 2 was a strong ending for Luke Cage's arc. The problem with that ending for the fans, however, is that it wasn't a happy ending and so it felt like a cliffhanger much like QUANTUM LEAP declaring that Sam Becket never returned home. I didn't see it that way myself; in fact, I liked the uncertainty of Luke being on a knife's edge of heroism and corruption, a place where he'd always been and would always be. That lack of resolution, to me, was meaningful in depicting how the individual will always be at odds with society and its institutions whether legitimate or not.

****

I think it's unlikely that Netflix will feature DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON with Jessica Henwick and Simone Missick or HEROES FOR HIRE with Mike Colter and Finn Jones. Marvel isn't going to create any new shows for Netflix. When the deal started, Marvel didn't have its own streaming service and needed Netflix, but now that Marvel has its own, it makes no sense to have an outside company do what they should be doing for themselves.

But Slider_Quinn21 is totally right: the Netflix era needs a finale to offer LUKE CAGE and IRON FIST a sendoff. I think they should do a second and final season of DEFENDERS too. Just throwing together an improvised outline here: the first four episodes feature Colleen and Misty investigating a new criminal element that draws in the cast of DAREDEVIL and JESSICA JONES and Danny. By the end of the fourth episode, all of them are ready to face off against the criminal mastermind who is revealed to be Luke Cage.

Episode five shows Luke's reluctant transition into becoming a crime boss who attempts to fill the power vacuum left by Fisk's downfall in the hope of consolidating crime under his organization so as to destroy it. Episode six shows Danny Rand's adventure after Season 2 of IRON FIST where he gained the Chi bullets and met a previous Iron Fist, Orson Randall, who taught him to master his own spirit without the Iron Fist.

Episodes seven to nine have the Defenders realizing Luke is on their side and that he needs their help and bring the story to a conclusion. If Netflix wants to go the extra mile, episodes ten to thirteen are each finale episodes, one for DAREDEVIL, one for JESSICA JONES, one for LUKE CAGE and one for IRON FIST.

(I'm leaving PUNISHER out of this because I can't really wrap my head around the Netflix version of the character even though I love Karen Page and her role in the series.)

The question is, does Netflix want to sink more money into an effectively expired product? Netflix is completing obligations to JESSICA JONES' third season and a second season for THE PUNISHER; I wouldn't count on Netflix doing anything else for Marvel after that.

LUKE CAGE's third season was certain until Netflix expressed disagreement with Marvel TV over the first five scripts. In the past, the studio and the broadcaster would have worked it out, but it seems that with the Marvel/Netflix partnership coming to an end, neither party saw the point of working through their dispute. LUKE CAGE was a dead end for Netflix whether it ended with Season 2 or 3, and that totally understandable view could nullify any chance for a DEFENDERS finale season.

Could Marvel do it themselves? Perhaps, but the current word is that the streaming service is going to aim for the family friendly audience of the AVENGERS movies as opposed to the adult-audience of the Netflix shows. I think it's likely that AGENT CARTER will return to the streaming service which Netflix declined to adopt because its lighthearted tone was off-brand for the darker Marvel shows.

I guess DEFENDERS finale could go to the Disney-owned FX or Hulu... if Marvel wants to make it at all.

Well, Season 3 if DAREDEVIL is excellent.