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The rumours of Chibnall and Whittaker leaving aren't true. The source is an absurd DOCTOR WHO 'fan site' whose webmaster hated Jodie Whittaker before he'd seen a single frame of her and has been creating one false rumour after another about her leaving the role and before the first episode had even aired. DOCTOR WHO is doing extremely well in the ratings and currently averaging 8.55 million viewers per episode, slightly beating the previous high point of the Tennant/Tate era (Series Four) averaging 8.05 million viewers per episode. I'm not sure which site is more ridiculous, the DOCTOR WHO fan site with whom this rumour originated or those asinine Midnight Edge videos asserting that Viacom is tricking CBS into signing over the TV rights to STAR TREK by stealthily having DISCOVERY set in the Viacom movie timeline.

**

TF's criticisms of the new DOCTOR WHO are fair. I think the Chibnall era has been a lot of fun so far. I really enjoy all the actors, especially Whittaker's magnificent charm and Bradley Walsh's subtle comic timing. I've enjoyed all the episodes in spite of their flaws, but they are emphasizing competence and efficiency rather than the lavish imagination of the Steven Moffat era. There's been a struggle to adapt to a new format and style, but "Demons of Punjab" was excellent in how it balanced historical drama, character arcs and science fiction elements. It's a shame TF missed it.

**

"Rosa"'s ending was quite a letdown with the Doctor suggesting that Rosa Parks' grand contribution to the universe was getting a rock named after her. I would have preferred a more nuanced ending: Ryan pointing out that Rosa hardly ended racism -- and the Doctor gently suggesting that Rosa showcased how every single person has the ability to resist tyranny and that even the smallest of resistances can matter. Yaz could ask how much will it matter: do racism and prejudice ever vanish from the cosmos? And the Doctor could put her hand to the TARDIS controls and suggest that they all find out together. But I forgive the episode its faults because it was a *very* difficult story to pull off and I give it credit for walking a very tough tightrope even if it staggered and stumbled.

**

I liked the spiders and the P'Ting -- I liked how the episodes emphasized that these creatures were not malicious, evil or sadistic -- they were merely forms of life seeking to survive and at odds with human beings. But TF's criticism is fair And TF is basically right in general: I'm having fun, but the Chibnall era lacks inventiveness. Paradoxically, part of that is three episodes confronted America's history of racism, corrupt capitalism in the UK and the Partition of India, and having the Doctor end such evils with the sonic screwdriver risks grossly trivializing real-life struggle, but having the Doctor avoid doing anything offensive risks doing the same.

This is the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW5jbG1Ydcc -- although I downloaded it as an MP3 using the y2mate.com YouTube to audio site.

I think combining fat and caffeine is a pretty effective way to start the day. The typical American diet is overly dependent on carbohydrates and sugar which are taxing to break down for energy with most of it being stored as fat whereas fat can be burned more directly for fuel (which is why high fat, low carb diets tend to work for weight loss). That said, I dunno that it HAS to be Bulletproof's products -- I just dissolve unsalted no name brand butter in my grocery store brand coffee. It works!

Did anyone else read this and get jealous? Like -- TF is talking to someone about LEGENDS? Someone who isn't US? Who!? Where!? When!?!? Why weren't WE included!??! Oh, wait, we are being included. Okay. Carry on.

So, when Dinah was lying insensate on the ground and there was a close-up of a bad guy approaching her with a murder implement, I totally assumed we would cut away to another sequence and we'd next see Dinah wandering into the police precinct making reference to an offscreen rescue from ARGUS.

The same source also tells me that Robert Singer directed last season's finale drunk.

... It would explain the wire fight and that ending freeze frame.

The Flash costume... well, they're lighting it a lot better than they were in the first two episodes of Season 5. It's a bit darker. However -- and this is driving me crazy -- the cut of the cowl at the neck-chin line has not been correctly sized for Grant Gustin's body, and it keeps rolling up or hanging loose, and it doesn't suit a character who should have a very clean, streamlined design. And part of this is because they lost the chinstrap and the secure hold it had on Gustin's face.

Did you have some kind of run-in with Zoe McLellan?

Theoretically, I'm not surprised McLellan is fed up with SLIDERS which she probably remembers as 4- 6 days of filming for a couple months of rent money and a hope of returning that never came to pass. Since then, she's been through a ton of insanity. She had a son followed by a nasty divorce in which she was (falsely) accused of child abduction (acquitted, received a character testimony from Scott Bakula). She got fired off NCIS: NEW ORLEANS by notorious sexual harasser Brad Kern. She periodically stepped back from acting and started a motivational speaking program, worked as a life coach, and is currently working on DESSIGNATED SURVIVOR.

I could understand if, with all of this, she barely remembers anything about SLIDERS. That doesn't make it any less fascinating a subject for us, of course. :-)

SUPERGIRL 4.03 really struck a chord with me. I protested the simple-mindedness of presenting alien-fearing humans as bigots in 4.02. 4.03 shows the origin of Agent Liberty, Ben Lockwood (Sam Witwer) and it is a profoundly haunting portrayal that creates empathy even if one is opposed to him.

At the start, Ben is a gentle history professor and loving family man put off by his father's hate-driven, fear-fuelled rants against aliens. But the family steel mill goes out of business due to alien metals cornering the market. And then Ben's house is destroyed in the Season 2 Daxamite invasion and his family barely escapes.

After that, Ben is perpetually revisiting that moment of terror, feeling powerless. He voices his paranoia and fear: he tells at alien students in his history class that they're replacing him and that humans can't compete, also blaming aliens for the closure of his father's business. He gets fired.

Later, in the Season 3 terraforming attack, Ben's father is killed in the abandoned steel mill when it collapses. A grief-stricken, drunken Ben who has lost his home, business, job and father picks up a steel pipe and murders his first alien victim. Mercy Graves and Otis empower him with the Agent Liberty suit.

Sam Witwer's performance is stunning: the transition from a kindly man of principle to a terrorist is so gradual that it's hard to identify when Ben became Agent Liberty.

Throughout the script, 4.03 portrays how Ben and his father are presented with numerous opportunities throughout. Ben's history classes after the Daxamite invasion are filled with alien students; all these newcomers need a history teacher. Ben tells them that they aren't people, tells them they are hurting his family and terrifies them.

Mr. Lockwood learns that the steel mill could retrofit the machines and retrain the workers to produce alien metals stronger than steel. He refuses, seeing alien elements as a threat, and is driven out of business by plants that are prepared to adopt the alien technology.

At Mr. Lockwood's funeral, Lena Luthor attends, seeking Ben's help to start a fund to help people who have lost their homes in alien attacks. Any fund would benefit from Ben's story, knowledge and business acumen; Ben angrily dismisses her as an alien sympathizer and her fund as unwanted charity.

Each scene is written from Ben's point of view where all these chances seem like unwanted noise. Ben lacks our knowledge of Lena's character and her desire to do good. Ben has never seen the DEO use alien technology for human and alien benefit. Ben has never seen aliens and humans in mutually beneficial relationships. Ben only sees his life falling apart right when these different and alien newcomers arrived, and every time he sees an alien, he relives his terror and lashes out.

Ben's experiences are due to Earth having to deal with being one world in a vast cosmos and humans as once race among many -- an inevitable, inescapable fact of Earth 38 which Ben's shock can't allow him to assimilate.

Instead, Ben demands that Earth revert to a pre-alien existence and sees the way back as humans clubbing each extraterrestrial to death. His existence revolves around revisiting his terror and acting out in savagery and bloodlust.

At the end of 4.03, Mercy and Otis prepare to execute a DEO agent and Ben stops them, declaring humans unacceptable targets, his kindness and loving nature reserved only for some. And Witwer gives Ben this earnest sincerity that makes his hatred for the other terrifying.

So, having criticized SUPERGIRL for declaring a 1:1 correlation between alien immigrants and real-life immigrants when the two situations are quite different, I think 4.03 really worked by showing how a decent man of compassion and integrity became radicalized into a hate-mongering extremist through a series of traumatic events from the Kryptonian invasion of Season 1 and the Daxamite attack of Season 2 followed the terraforming crisis of Season 3.

The Agent Liberty character is clearly in shock and suffering from post traumatic stress and he loses the ability to distinguish paranoia from actual threat, becoming a murdering terrorist who justifies his crimes because he doesn't consider his victims to be equally human. 4.03 was really disturbing and frightening to me in its depiction of how hatred for Agent Liberty went from an absurd concept to his default reaction and these stories have never been more relevant than today.

Yeah, that's a really low bar to clear.

Back when Matt Hutaff and I were working on SLIDERS REBORN, he'd howl, "That's ridiculous!" to me 8-10 times per script page. I feel like people who reject the ridiculous don't really 'get' SLIDERS (which is not a crime).

That said, I think Matt would argue that I don't 'get' SLIDERS and that what I consider SLIDERS is actually a hybrid of DOCTOR WHO, superheroes, Temporal Flux and Hong Kong slapstick comedy movies.

The new Flash suit of Season 5 is an abomination. The previous designs used a darker red that was suited to live action: it could be lit for both day and night, shadow and sun. It looked like part of the reality of the show whether the Flash was on the city streets or in one of those abandoned warehouses or in a high tech lab or in a coffee shop. The material added shape and weight to Barry's body, emphasizing his runner's build and lightness of step.

The new suit -- the red is so bright, so oversaturated, that it makes the Flash look like he's been pasted on top of the more realistically coloured surroundings he occupies. The lack of lines and layers turns the Flash's body into a vaguely human-shaped blob of glow-in-the-dark red. The missing chinstrap makes the back of the Flash's head look overly large in comparison to his jaw; the back of his head seems swollen.

*facepalm* a faceful of *facepalm*

The simplest 'explanation' is that SUPERGIRL's Earth, Earth 38, has subtle yet significant differences from Earth 1 and our world. It clearly has no overpopulation or famine issues (hence Supergirl and Superman spending their time in North America and places that, on our Earth, would need the *least* amount of help from superheroes). Is it larger than our Earth? In JLA/AVENGERS, the Justice League noticed that the Marvel Universe Earth was smaller than the one in the DC Universe.

Earth 38 may, due to Superman gifting Kryptonian technology to humans, have farming and food synthesization techniques well-beyond what we know and have other forms of resource extraction and replenishment. I assume Superman has been working with scientists and built relationships so close that one of the scientists he knew was willing to adopt an alien teenaged girl into his family with Superman's complete trust.

But regardless of the source, Earth 38 is home to incredible technological advancements. They have AI, androids, cyborgs, force fields, sonic hand-weapons, incredibly advanced body armour, cryogenic pods -- it's clearly ahead of us and totally equipped to welcome refugees from other worlds.

I dated one person who identified as non-binary and transgender and they would have considered it offputting to see transgender people accepted without comment. I mean, maybe we'll get there someday, but we are not there yet and seeing someone face prejudice means more right now than seeing a world where it doesn't exist.

I wonder why it'd be okay for SUPERGIRL to act like overpopulation and poverty don't exist but it wouldn't work to say that bigotry doesn't exist. I guess what it comes down to is that SUPERGIRL is not our world, but it should always serve as a reflection and dramatic representation of select conflicts in our world as suited to its format and genre.

I adore SUPERGIRL, but for Episodes 4.01 - 4.02, I have to put on my Informant hat and engage in some criticisms of the show's political positions and portrayals. SUPERGIRL's season arc kicks off with anti-alien prejudice slowly rising two years after Season 2 had President Olivia Marsdin (Lynda Carter) established alien amnesty laws to grant all extraterrestrials asylum in the United States.

Season 4 reveals to the public that Marsdin is an alien herself, pretending to be human. Her exposure and resignation brings anti-alien sentiment mainstream, leading to mass paranoia and hate crimes in the United States as aliens are perceived as infiltrators and invaders.

SUPERGIRL, having seemed oddly out of touch last year in its happy world of non-lethal black ops agents and clumsy efforts at gun control storylines, has finally understood that its strength is not in copy-pasting headlines but in allegory and metaphor, using aliens to represent real-world tensions.

But within its fictional world, SUPERGIRL seems unable to acknowledge the self-induced political disaster that Marsdin has brought upon herself and her supporters. As an illegal alien, every policy decision Marsdin made from the alien amnesty act to the Oval Office carpet must be considered illegitimate. Season 2 identified Marsdin as a Democrat; the Democratic Party of Earth-38 is now the party that allowed an illegal immigrant to infiltrate and lead them. Any policy or cause that Marsdin led is now tainted, damaged and done.

This story makes it absolutely necessary to question Marsdin's ego and motivations for the presidency -- in fact, the question should have come in in Season 2 when Cat Grant and Supergirl learned the truth, but they understandably took note that Marsdin was a staunch ally and defender against the Daximite invasion. But instead, 4.02 has Supergirl comforting Marsdin who says she only became president to help people and Supergirl tells her that it's unfair that she's been forced to resign. There is no moral analysis whatsoever regarding Marsdin's deceiving the American people to become their leader.

Marsdin selects her vice president to take over which is nonsensical; she isn't a natural-born American citizen and the whole world knows it now. Congress would never permit her to transfer her position to a chosen successor. Earth-38's America should be in a full-blown constitutional crisis right now. SUPERGIRL should be questioning Marsdin severely right now.

But to do so would force the show to adopt a greater level of ambiguity when it would prefer to present any anti-alien/anti-immigrant sentiment as unfounded bigotry and prejudice -- except SUPERGIRL's immigrants are superpowered beings, a situation that has problems well-beyond real immigration in the real world. The alien immigrant storyline, if critical of Marsdin, could conceivably lead to a story where keeping aliens and humans separate is necessary to save lives due to the massive power imbalances at work -- which isn't something SUPERGIRL wants to say. It is a risk of this storyline and SUPERGIRL should dive into it and explore that doubt and uncertainty and find a way to reconcile its values with its reality.

But SUPERGIRL has preferred to offer a black and white conflict in which anyone afraid of an illegitimate leader of the free world is the Earth-38 equivalent of a real world racist when, within the fictional context, the fear is entirely reasonable and justified.

I mean -- fine. I certainly appreciate Supergirl and her friends getting increasingly worried as National City's populace gangs up on aliens and rant about how aliens won't replace them; allegory and metaphor are potent and powerful. But if SUPERGIRL isn't prepared to question its own values when those questions are glaringly present, then SUPERGIRL's values seem hollow and weak. The show comes off as loudly blustering but is ultimately timid and hesitant.

I mean, maybe I'm asking too much of a TV show for families featuring a children's character, but SUPERGIRL raised these issues.

I am putting this post in the Arrowverse thread as the creators have taken no official stance on whether or not TITANS exists on Earth 1 (FLASH/ARROW/LEGENDS) or Earth 38 (SUPERGIRL), and given that Bruce Wayne has been mentioned on ARROW and Batman in SUPERGIRL, TITANS could take place in either or neither.

Anyway. The first two episodes of TITANS are pretty dark, but it makes sense. Robin's brutality towards villains with eye gouging and crippling seems logical for a street-level vigilante character.

I'm not familiar with the TEEN TITANS comics; I read NIGHTWING religiously from 1996 – 2005 and know Dick Grayson's character well, but the NIGHTWING comics were very separate from TEEN TITANS. NIGHTWING was under the Batman line editor which mandated a street-level crime approach, so NIGHTWING neither acknowledged nor contradicted Dick Grayson's exploits with TITANS.

Dick Grayson in this show is like no Dick Grayson in the NIGHTWING comics, but that's understandable. The comic book Dick has been largely a sunny, cheerful, Captain America-type without much internal conflict. He's beloved by comic book readers, but his glowing emotional health makes him difficult to write. Some writers have drowned him in trauma or had him struggle with living up to Batman's legacy, the pendulum inevitably returns to writers emphasizing Dick's acrobatic abilities and put him in crazy action sequences or use his bright personality to contrast with grimdark situations. 

The TITANS Dick is a troubled, angry, isolated young man who is caustic towards both colleagues and people who need his help and seems to have been traumatized by Batman, an offscreen and absent father figure whom Dick has rejected. I don't know what's going on there, but it's compelling and speaks to drama and a past whereas a more comics-accurate characterization wouldn't say much of anything.

The TV show has currently formed the cast with Dick, Raven, Starfire, Hawk and Dove is showing how all the characters are orphans who either lack family or have left it behind, and that's pretty interesting. There's a bloody intensity to the show with fast cutting and hyperserious darkness that's very much like a Zack Snyder movie.

The first two episodes create a very tender and sweet brother-sister relationship between Dick and Raven, both orphans who have stumbled into each other's lives. When the show introduces Hawk and Dove, they're presented as capable superheroes whose numerous adventures have hurt them: Hawk has many injuries, needs a variety of painkillers and surgery and is impotent while Dove is no longer enamoured with being a superhero outside of appropriating money from criminals to retire. This, matched with Dick's loneliness and savagery, presents a dark view of superheroes as damaged warriors seeing criminals as acceptable targets for their violent urges.

It's most unlike ARROW presenting superheroes as civil servants and totally opposed to FLASH and SUPERGIRL depicting them as emergency responders. Starfire, off in her own plot, is shown as a dangerous superweapon who thankfully has only killed murderers so far but could go off on anyone. Beast Boy is a thief.

TITANS makes no effort to introduce the concept of superheroes; they're treated as a known quantity from the start and it's assumed that the audience knows Dick and Raven from their appearances in cartoons even if these are darker versions. There is no sense of establishing a weekly formula like the Arrowverse shows; this main throughline is Raven on the run from mysterious criminal organizations and it's one story that looks to be split across 12 episodes.

The visual quality is strong and the scenes are compelling, but TITANS feels like a TV producer taking the leftover bits and pieces of whatever copyrights are currently unlicensed and trying to cram them into a TV show. The first episode suggested that it was about orphans which would reflect TITANS being composed of castoffs from other TV and film deals, but the second episode introduced Hawk and Dove as over-the-hill heroes. I don't really know what TITANS is aside from it feeling like a spin-off to a BATMAN TV show that hasn't been made.

https://deadline.com/2018/10/luke-cage- … 202486487/

LUKE CAGE is cancelled. I'm shocked; the writers had been prepping Season 3, a renewal had been expected even after IRON FIST was cancelled. The first five episodes of Season 3 had been written.

There is one aspect of SLIDERS REBORN that I never talked about -- the podcast. https://earthprime.com/podcast/sliders-rewatch-reborn

Tom and Cory of THE REWATCH PODCAST expressed a desire to do a podcast to cover SLIDERS REBORN but (understandably) backed off when discovering the scripts were 4 pages, 95 pages, 151 pages, 46 pages and 144 pages with a 6,300 word novella as well. They'd been expecting 46-page screenplays.

But... the thought of hearing Tom and Cory's voices describe SLIDERS REBORN meant so much to me that I wrote a screenplay for them to perform where they would alternatively praise and pick away at my writing.

Being good sports, they proceeded to perform the script and send me the raw audio to edit. They were splendid. Tom was full of charm and enthusiasm as scripted; Cory had been written to be critical and mocking and he softened it with a gentle affection that I found touching. They'd also made numerous additions and ad-libs that I just adored. Strangely, when editing, I found I preferred the parts where they mocked and belittled my writing, so I trimmed any positive views to the minimum. They sent me two hours from which I cut an hour.

I actually wrote Tom's post above in which he expressed his alarm at the length of the scripts.

From a writing standpoint, it was fun to give Tom and Cory some of their trademark catchphrases and to also deliberately have them refer to past episodes with the wrong titles, to have Tom be charmed by my pastiche of the sliders and for Cory to note all the errors and plotholes. I think my favourite part of the podcast is when the boys mockingly recap 'Revolution' (6), a script that features Jerry O'Connell facing Robert Floyd. Here it is with their ad-libs.

CORY: "Okay. Part 5 of Sliders Reborn: it's a 46-page script called 'Revolution,' written by ireactions and published on June 6, 2016."

TOM: "June! So, it was eight months between 'Reminiscence' and 'Revolution'?"

CORY: "I guess life happened or something?"

TOM: (laughing) "Eight months to write... this."

CORY: "This one -- can we actually try to get through a summary?

TOM: "You can try. Uh, maybe we should play the usual music."

The plot summary background music begins.

CORY: (chuckling) "Okay -- so the script is mostly a dream sequence where Quinn is trapped in this mansion that's on fire and Quinn's in a room filling with toxic gas, and he hallucinates Mallory."

TOM: "This would be the character played by Robert Floyd in Season 5 -- the lab assistant that got merged with Quinn. So -- the whole script here -- it's mostly Quinn and Mallory talking."

CORY: "Yeah, Mallory asks Quinn how he ended up in this room filling with poisoned gas, and Quinn runs through his day: this lady in the merged San Francisco was buying tech from parallel Earths, building a virtual reality machine and bankrupting her company and putting all her employees out of work to build it. Quinn went to confront her and got really upset. He went to her house to sabotage her machine only to accidentally set off the hallucinogenic gas that the machine uses -- "

TOM: (verge of laughing) "Because the VR machine uses hallucinogenic gas. Because -- what?!"

CORY: "I don't know."

TOM: "Hahahahahah!"

CORY: "Let's try to get through this. The gas is not only a hallucinogen but highly flammable, Quinn's now overcome by the fumes, he's trapped in the house, he's hallucinating Mallory, and Mallory is trying to talk to him and figure out why Quinn was so fixated on this woman. Tom -- you finish the rest of this summary. I just -- I can't do it."

TOM: "Hahaha! Oh-kay... "

Tom takes a deep breath.

TOM: "Okay -- so it turns out, this lady -- she's Melanie Wallace -- a character who appeared for like one minute in the Season 2 episode with the psychics. She's a psychic. Quinn wanted her help to fix this broken multiverse, but Melanie's seen the future and there's just no hope, and she built this VR machine to... to give herself a perfect afterlife? I mean, I don't even... I don't even -- ughhhh."

CORY: "Keep going, you're almost there."

TOM: "Okay, so, Quinn accidentally detonated the gas. Melanie's dead. Quinn's dying. Quinn has lost hope for saving reality, Mallory gives him a pep talk, and this dream sequence helps Quinn find a way out of the burning house and survive and feel hope for the future? Okay?"

CORY: "Okay."

TOM: "Okay."

The background music ends.

TOM: "I don't even -- I don't think we exactly summarized this story.

CORY: "I think these 46-pages defy a synopsis."

TOM: "Well. You were right before -- all of ireactions' plots are sort of flimsy excuses to get the characters he wants together in the same room -- and for this story, he wanted to get Jerry O'Connell's Quinn and Robert Floyd's Quinn together in the same room.

CORY: (horrified whisper) " ... why... ?"

TOM: "Well, ireactions interviewed Rob Floyd, remember? So, as of this script, Maggie and Diana had joined the cast. And he said in his notes that he didn't feel comfortable leaving Mallory out because it'd be insulting to Rob Floyd -- I mean, they're not like best friends or anything, but they're friends. So he wrote this dream sequence script, y'know?"

CORY: (exasperated) "Jesus."

TOM: "Hahahahah! He said -- he says in his notes -- he sent the script to Rob Floyd, and Rob thanked him, but Rob never got back to him with what he thought, probably because Rob hasn't seen that many episodes of SLIDERS and didn't understand it."

CORY: "Well, I've seen every episode of SLIDERS and I barely understand what's going on."

TOM: (snickering) "Yeah."

CORY: "You've got a psychic creating a VR machine that uses hallucinogenic gas that explodes, a video game company, a terminal illness, Quinn being obsessed with the VR machine, and the VR machine creating a digital afterlife because... ?"

TOM: "Because it creates a situation where Quinn's trapped in a burning building and hallucinating and the hallucination of Mallory gives him information that helps Quinn escape."

CORY: "I think -- I've generally liked Parts 1 to 4 of SLIDERS REBORN. There's some issues in ireactions' approach -- he has a lot of tricks where he obviously works out the scenes he wants before he works out the plot, and he dresses it up with humour and jokes and it's all good."

TOM: "But this time -- it's not."

CORY: "This is where his tricks don't work. The story's a mess."

TOM: "Yeah. The main appeal of ireactions' writing is that he captures the voices of the actors which you said before. But I don't think he pulls it off for Robert Floyd's Mallory -- mostly because Mallory never had a strong voice on the show, so really, ireactions doesn't have anything to work with."

CORY: "You're exactly right. I can excuse pretty much all the problems with Parts 1 to 4 because they get characters I really like back, but Mallory isn't one of those characters."

TOM: "Also -- in Parts 1 to 4, all the references to the past were really effective. But here -- Mallory tells Quinn he's beaten all these bad guys in the past, the CDC, the Prime Oracle, the Zercurvians -- and there's all these descriptions of people Quinn's helped -- but I couldn't remember who any of these people were."

CORY: "I did know who all these people were -- Gillian, Holly the hotel manager and her son, uh, the kid from the Western episode -- but it felt like this joyless shopping list."

TOM: "Well, yeah, especially the kid from the Western episode that you love so much. 'Come back, Quinn! Come back!'"

CORY: "Gnnrrrghhhhh!"

TOM: "Throughout that, I felt ireactions was really trying. He comes up with an arc for Quinn. He finds a way to show that Quinn's scientifically talented, but Mallory knows people. But the plot's too scattered. It's just too convoluted to work Mallory into the story and give him something, like, substantial to do."

CORY: "It just shows that ireactions' strengths are in writing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo -- and if those four characters aren't on the page in some form, his style just falls apart."

SUPERGIRL had a great premiere, although I was somewhat thrown off by Supergirl being unable to catch up to a villain fleeing on a motorcycle? ARROW also had a great premiere, although I was somewhat thrown off by Felicity being in mortal peril in one scene and being completely fine the next? Both shows have set up some great stuff for the season that I'm really excited about; SUPERGIRL is pursuing its strengths as an allegorical fantasy in a wonderland of a city while ARROW is (hopefully) continuing to stick to the grounded, street-level storytelling of Season 2 combined with the soap opera of Season 4 but few if any of the fantasy elements of the League of Assassins and Damien Darhk. And Informant is also having a fantastic season premiere with all the signature aspects of a good season of his stuff and I'm really excited about what else he'll bring to the table.

Look, I take no pleasure in Informant's displeasure with TV and I can't say I share even a fraction of his distaste for the Arrowverse or that I'm enamoured with his gendered analysis of television but it's *interesting* to read and he's totally right about Felicity's offscreen rescue and the shift from ARROW becoming less like BATMAN BEGINS and more like (shudder) SMALLVILLE.

Singer has never given his side of the story, only blanket denials. I don't have any real facts to offer, but in that TMZ interview, Singer did not condemn Kevin Spacey, a known and self-confessed child molester who assaulted Anthony Rapp. Singer did not rule out working with Spacey. Singer did not express any shame or regret for, as he said, having helped launch Spacey to stardom. Singer did not show any sign of anger or outrage towards a child abuser. And what I didn't see there really disturbed me.

I don’t believe James Gunn is a pedophile. I believe he was raped when he was a boy by a teacher and his tweets and the costume party and such were a troubled attempt to deny his trauma.

That said, I also didn’t believe Bryan Singer to be a rapist only for many Hollywood actors (Evan Rachel Wood, Jessica Chastain) to describe it as an open secret...

My Moto G5 Plus with Android Nougat its 2 GB of RAM had been struggling lately. It kept lagging and freezing and this was a serious problem when driving with Google Maps where the navigation would be unable to tell me I was coming up on an exit until I'd driven right past it. The Chrome browser kept freezing. I disabled the Google app, removed Chrome and took out the Assistant app and the phone returned to adequate function, but it'd still freeze up from time to time.

It became clear that apps were calling for more RAM than the G5 Plus had to offer and I wondered if I ought to buy a new phone, but it seemed insane to replace this one when it's only nine months old. However, I downloaded the Oreo update and now the performance is back to where it was even with Google apps re-enabled. Oreo seems to be more aggressive in preventing background apps from using system resources for too long. The device feels new again.

Apple seems to be having a good year as well with iOS updates. I'd prevented OS updates on my iPad 5, but the reports came in that iOS 12 has improved performance on all older devices, so I updated before restoring the update block. The iPad 5 is running just the same as the day I bought it.

This is something I pondered in the Random Thoughts thread. I read every single NINJA TURTLES comic from the original Mirage publishers and I found that in the end, none of it was all that good because despite being the original source material, it was dated, out of touch, unrefined, raw and none of it really deepened my appreciation for the 90s NINJA TURTLES film and the 2012 NINJA TURTLES series. I enjoyed the Wally West run on THE FLASH, but I can't see it being a necessity to appreciating the TV show today. But it's case by case -- there has never been a truly great BATMAN TV show with ongoing arcs and a progressive mythology. If you want a modern rendition of Batman beyond the film noir of the Nolan series, you'll have to go to the comics. If you want a twenty-first century SPIDER-MAN series that reflects twenty-first century concerns and the 60s iconography, you'll have to go to the comics.

But THE FLASH, ARROW and SUPERGIRL as TV shows have made the Flash and Supergirl comics a bit redundant. Only GREEN ARROW comics still have something unique from the show because they're not anything like the ARROW series and more like the Justin Hartley Green Arrow of SMALLVILLE.

How essential is it to watch the classics when it comes to television?

My niece was intrigued by THE X-FILES and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, both of which were important and vital fantasy shows. But is there anything either show has to offer in terms of storytelling (ongoing mythology, progressive character development) that isn't done with a more skillful touch in SUPERNATURAL and SHADOWHUNTERS? It's not because TXF and BVS were poor; later shows learned from where previous shows stumbled while growing from their strengths. I adore THE FLASH TV series on the CW but have only ever been able to struggle through two episodes of the 90s show.

Shows like THE PRISONER, BABYLON 5 and the 60s STAR TREK and DOCTOR WHO are a fascinating form of televised theatre and stand the test of time as a compelling artifact, but it is really hard to get through MACGYVER or MATLOCK in a post-CSI era.

NINJA TURTLES has had so many incarnations -- but I really can't recommend that a potential new fan read the unreadable Mirage comics or delve into the childish and repetitive and clumsy 80s - 90s animated series and the 2003 series is rather dour and slow and the movies are extremely mixed. Really, the best incarnation to watch is the 2012 Nickelodeon CG series which is visually up to date and picks the strongest elements of all previous versions.

What are the classics we can't miss and the classics we should feel free to skip? It's hard to recommend that anyone watch SLIDERS when FRINGE is available and on blu-ray; it's tough to send anyone to DAWSON'S CREEK when we've got RIVERDALE -- newer isn't always better, but older isn't always relevant.

I don't think the divide between MAN OF STEEL and SUPERGIRL is in terms of the amount of effects but rather how elaborate the process is. MAN OF STEEL spent a year or two preparing conceptual work for how it would look when Superman lifted things, punched enemies or flew; SUPERGIRL took maybe a month. MAN OF STEEL's fights unfolded across an entire town and then a city; SUPERGIRL's fights are isolated to a single space. The TV scale is more minimalistic, and maybe movies need to start doing the same thing in process and visualization too.

MAN OF STEEL, BVS and JUSTICE LEAGUE were filmed all around the globe; SUPERGIRL and THE FLASH are filmed entirely in Vancouver these days.

So, if you were to have done MAN OF STEEL and BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE on a closer to TV budget, you wouldn't have Ben Affleck, Amy Adams, Laurence Fishburne or any other movie star performers with their movie star quotes. You wouldn't have non-Vancouver location filming, so any non-urban environments like Smallville, Africa or the Arctic would be natural Vancouver areas without buildings, stock footage, greenscreen work and sets. Superman and Zod would fight in the sewers, not across a whole city. There would be an emphasis on superheroes using their powers in one specific way in one powerful slow motion shot rather than lengthy sequences of them using their powers in different ways.

Whatever their faults, MAN OF STEEL, BVS and JUSTICE LEAGUE showed superheroes at full power without SMALLVILLE's offscreen power usage, without THE FLASH and SUPERGIRL's reliance on standing sets and a generic city background and without single-room fights. Can an audience that's seen MAN OF STEEL level supeheroics accept stepping back to a superhero film that's closer to ARROW than BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN? I do not know.

Well, I'm looking forward to AQUAMAN. I've never read a single issue of his comic, but I really enjoyed Jason Momoa in JUSTICE LEAGUE. I'm excited for the next WONDER WOMAN and SHAZAM features Zachary Levi from CHUCK, so I'm eager for that. BIRDS OF PREY has a 2020 release date and I love the old TV show although it wasn't actually good.

... as for the swirling fog that is DC after these three films -- whatever. There's not much to discuss in terms of specifics.

When it comes to generalities, though -- what we're looking at is that the bubble has burst on the blockbuster feature film extravaganza which is globally successful to audiences who don't speak English, see subtitled versions and enjoy computer generated lunacy. TRANSFORMERS really tapped into this subliterate, visual-seeking market.

Since then, the cost of movie tickets and the rise of streaming services has more of the audience staying home. Movies like JUSTICE LEAGUE simply cost too much and profit too little and I think Warner Bros. is going to have to seriously rethink how much they spend and on what they spend it.

SUPERGIRL presents Superman-powers on a TV budget and while its effects would most definitely not pass muster on the big screen (and struggle already for the small), there's got to be some mid-point between two million an episode (a guess) and 300 million for a two hour JUSTICE LEAGUE movie at which a 660 million dollar gross for movies like JL is a success instead of a failure.

There is probably a way to make good, modern, $80 million dollar SUPERMAN and BATMAN movies -- but I suspect that you can't make them with Henry Cavill and Ben Affleck as their current contracts were designed with the TRANSFORMERS-style model in mind. You could probably make SUPERGIRL and ARROW movies for $80 million as Melissa Benoist and Stephen Amell charge a lot less.

I remember, maybe 10 years ago, I said that the best medium for superhero movies was animation. The technology has advanced; the days of SMALLVILLE restricting Clark's powers to the budgetary minimum is over and even on a CW budget, Supergirl can fly in every episode, but currently, the most profitable medium for superheroes is the TV model and market. Maybe it's time to bring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Green Lantern to the Arrowverse -- and let them rise from there to the big screen, but on a budget closer to TV. I suppose that's the DC streaming service?

You are absolutely right. I was being snarky.

Spoilers for IRON FIST Season 2 --

IRON FIST's second season is getting mixed reviews. The highest praise it's received is that it's not as much a disaster as the first season. Even the worst reviews noted that Season 2 was less boring than Season 1 and demonstrated basic competence.

My view: the show suffers from its inability to explore the mythology of the Iron Fist. All the Netflix shows are street level crimefighting stories, but DARDEVIL has courtroom drama mixed with crime noir, JESSICA JONES has female empowerment, LUKE CAGE has reappropriated blaxploitation, PUNISHER is militaristic -- IRON FIST should have dragon-punching mystic spectacle, but it can't afford it on a Netflix budget. As a result, IRON FIST lacks a distinct identity to justify its existence.

I still really enjoyed Season 2, but I confess -- I enjoyed it more as a writing exercise in repairing a troubled series. IRON FIST's first season had a ton of problems. It had Danny Rand as the heroic Iron Fist, sworn enemy of the Hand, protector of the city of K'un Lun.

However, his foster brother, Davos, declared that Danny, in returning to New York, had abandoned his post, stolen the Iron Fist power and left the city defenseless. Danny protested that (a) as the Iron Fist, it was up to him to define the role and (b) Davos was only upset that Danny left their friendship and that protecting K'un Lun was not an issue. This didn't address the accusation that Danny had robbed K'un Lun of its heritage and protection. 

Another conflict: Danny spent Season 1 regaining control of the Rand corporation. At no point did Danny articulate any intentions for his company beyond regaining his identity. This claim on the company, while valid, suggested his winning the Iron Fist and taking it to New York City was the same sense of entitlement. The show's only real response was to show Danny was an incompetent businessman before dismissing the plot.

This left the show's moral position confused: was Davos correct to call Danny a thief or was it Danny's right to leave K'un Lun? Davos was written to be violent, petty and cruel towards innocent people, effectively dismissing his criticisms. Yet, the ending of Season 1 showed K'un Lun destroyed, indicating that Davos was correct and that Danny had no right to take the Iron Fist and return to New York.

But the immediate follow-up was DEFENDERS which didn't explore the issue, switching the focus to defeating the Hand. The show couldn't seem to articulate any position, offering conflict but unwilling to commit to any defense or criticism of Danny's choices.

Showrunner Scott Buck would later take his clumsy grasp of moral judgment to INHUMANS (which is about a brutal monarchy of slavers as the heroes and their slaves as the villains and I don't even want to imagine how Buck would handle that one).

Anyway. IRON FIST's Season 2 had a new showrunner, M. Raven Metzner, who had inherited quite a mess. The premiere makes a number of immediate shifts: Danny has exited the corporate world and works as a mover, no longer using the Rand Corporation's money. This effectively declares that he only pursued his company as part of regaining his identity.

In this premiere, Davos confronts Danny over K'un Lun being left unprotected and now destroyed. Danny doesn't dispute this but notes that the Iron Fist is also sworn to fight the Hand which he helped destroy in DEFENDERS. Davos declares Danny unworthy of the Iron Fist and where Danny in Season 1 dismissed this, Danny is now deeply shaken.

Season 2 also shows some flashbacks to K'un Lun where Danny and Davos were regularly tortured to prepare them to compete for the Iron Fist. It shows that their final competition was rigged: both are evenly matched with Davos initially superior, Danny getting the upper hand at which point the judges (one of whom is Davos' father) declare Danny the winner when they could just have easily ruled in Davos' favour earlier or waited for the fight to turn Davos' way again.

This doesn't exonerate Danny from taking the Iron Fist from the city it was meant to defend. But it was the Iron Fist judges who steered a traumatized and dislocated orphan into a violently abusive competition and then rigged the match to assign him their most powerful weapon. It was the judges who abused Danny and then gave him the job of defending their home despite knowing he'd try to get home the first chance he got.

Season 2 also shows: Danny didn't 'win' the Iron Fist for being the best fighter; Davos was beating him. Davos' father saw Davos' psychopathy and preferred the Fist go to the weaker candidate, someone less volatile and supposedly easier to control.

Where Scott Buck introduced ambiguity that was confusing and frustrating, M. Raven Metzner offers clear definition. Danny Rand concedes the truth: Davos is too unstable to wield the Iron Fist, but Danny only pursued it for the power and prestige it held in K'un Lun. There is only one person in IRON FIST thus far who has shown the compassion, responsibility and commitment needed to bear the Iron Fist and wield it well. It isn't Danny. It isn't Davos. It's Colleen Wing.

Colleen is a teacher, not a soldier. Colleen seeks to protect, not to fight. Colleen had the strength to realize her commitment to the Hand was based on a lie and to turn against them. Colleen is worthy. And when Danny comes to this realization, IRON FIST shows Danny to be a hero in the true Marvel position where his strength is not in wielding power, but in his willingness to give it up.

It's strong writing. It doesn't come off as strong writing. IRON FIST in Season 1 was terrible. Season 2 is so focused on repairing Season 1 that the terrible and excellent collide to produce a Season 2 that is extremely average. Season 2 is so busy retrofitting itself into the show it wants to be – Colleen Wing as the Immortal Iron Fist – that by the time the job is done, Season 2 is over.

At the same time, deciding to replace your leading man is an extremely difficult proposition. It has to be earned over time and Season 2 is quite determined to earn it over its 10 episodes.

Very interesting. It's neat to hear that the supernaturalless/science fiction-free I WANT TO BELIEVE was the way it was because the studio wanted a minimal budget. Spotnitz graciously opted out of talking about the Revival aside from saying he would, like any writer, have told different stories.

Spotnitz was frank that the mythology of THE X-FILES suffered because there were certain stories they only wanted to tell to end the show and they never felt quite certain whether or not the show was ending. Except shows like BUFFY and SUPERNATURAL suggest it's best to wrap up your arcs after a reasonable time and eagerly create new ones rather than hoarding your stories and delaying your resolutions endlessly.

The well-received X-MEN movies fit into the comic book film landscape just fine; they just don't fit into the Worlds of DC and Marvel Cinematic Universe being set in heightened, exaggerated superhero realities. Most comic book movies are larger than life like SMALLVILLE. The Bryan Singer and Matthew Vaughn X-MEN films put the X-Men in our world -- but our world with mutants. Every fantasy element added to our world, whether technological or paranormal, existed in relation to mutants. Christopher Nolan would take this real-world-except-for-a-specific-element aesthetic and apply it to his Batman trilogy, but it started with X-MEN.

The X-MEN series has lapsed in this approach. After Singer left the series with X2, FOX's Tom Rothman was the steward for X-MEN: THE LAST STAND and X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE (actual title) which weren't concerned with depicting the real world with mutants only becoming prominent in the 2000s, and those became garish B-movie action thrillers.

Vaughn restored the original style when he merged the X-Men with the 60s and the Cuban Missile Crisis in FIRST CLASS, Singer returned and merged the X-Men with Watergate, James Mangold focused on quiet character study in his two Wolverine features -- but then Singer's APOCALYPSE, strangely, tried to jump on the mass-destruction summer blockbuster bandwagon and lost all realism. Simon Kinberg, directing the upcoming DARK PHOENIX, says he thinks this was a mistake and wants DARK PHOENIX to return to the real-world approach.

The Marvel Netflix shows have tried to capture a real-world look similar to Singer's first three movies through filming and dialogue and locations, but the writing is decidedly set in a crazy superhero universe. FOX's best X-MEN movies were set in our universe. There's something worthwhile there if Marvel wants to retain that.

I haven't seen SENSE8 yet, but I'll get to it. I'm a big fan of writer J. Michael Straczynski's comic books (SPIDER-MAN, THOR, MIDNIGHT NATION, RISING STARS, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, SUPERMAN EARTH ONE) and I liked BABYLON 5. I miss his comic book work; his output had slowed to a crawl for many years and then he admitted that he'd been going blind, making it hard to write, but an experimental surgery restored his sight and then he felt the need to move on from comics and film and move into prose. I'm not clear if he's staying in movies or TV.

**

I like to watch XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS and Nickelodeon's NINJA TURTLES on my iPad in the gym. The intense physicality of those shows gets me energized. I also liked watching TOMB RAIDER (2018).