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I thought CRISIS ON EARTH–X was good and a strong correction on INVASION last year. The creators filmed four episodes of CRISIS when they would have normally filmed four of ARROW, four of FLASH, four of LEGENDS and four of SUPERGIRL.

As a result, the lead cast (Oliver, Barry and Kara) are evenly distributed across the entire story as opposed to last year where they were front and center for the first, reduced to cameos for the second and only returned fully for the last half of the third episode.

With CRISIS, Parts 1 – 2 feature them prominently. Part 3 has them appearing just as much but has them confined to locations (Kara at STAR Labs, Barry and Oliver either at the Nazi base or the Resistance HQ). In Part 4, the Legends take center stage to start, but Oliver, Barry and Kara resume their lead roles at the 1/3 mark.

As with last year, the crossover frontloads their screentime, then reduces them but has them return in full force for the end. This time, however, the supporting cast were sufficiently foregrounded that it doesn't feel like actor unavailability as much as giving the other characters their spotlight. Jax and Stein have a great rapport and arc throughout the crossover. Alex's uncertainty with a post–Maggie sex life is hilarious. When Mr. Terrific, Wild Dog and Black Canary show up in Part 3 to defend STAR Labs, it feels like a delightful surprise and when the Atom and Nate come to the rescue in Part 4, it feels appropriate to spend some time with them after lavishing so much attention on the stars.

Stein's exit from the series was meaningful and everything Professor Arturo's death wasn't on SLIDERS. It wasn't necessary to kill Stein off, but I appreciate the show wanting to take Victor Garber's departure as an opportunity for tragedy and growth and accept that he wouldn't return as a guest-star or come back next year. Where INVASION felt overblown, incidental and quickly forgotten, CRISIS will leave lingering impact on all the shows: Alex has gotten over Maggie; Barry and Iris are married; Oliver and Felicity are married; the Legends have lost their father figure.

Also, the CRISIS villains were much more effective than INVASION. The Dominators were generic thugs who wanted to invade Earth by attacking one rooftop. In contrast, Overgirl, Dark Archer and the Reverse Flash had clear goals in wanting Kara's heart. In terms of production, the scale was so much larger and yet the story was so much smaller and much more effective.

Production sounds like it was a bit desperate at times. Apparently, even with a four week shooting schedule for four episodes and the crew of four TV shows working on the project, actor availability was an issue. Every single actor had multiple photo doubles filming scenes concurrently so that any sequence that didn't need the actor's face onscreen was used for maximum advantage. The Dark Archer and Overgirl had masks so that it wouldn't be necessary for Amell and Benoist to play them except when exposed. It worked.

Amell says that taking four weeks to shoot four episodes (instead of 16) threw all the shows badly off schedule and that they can't do it again next year -- but from a quality standpoint, the INVASION approach was rather disappointing to me and I hope they don't return to it. It'd be best to accept that a crossover, to serve all the characters and get all of them onscreen for satisfying periods of time, will push back the subsequent episodes.

There were a bunch of minor issues with CRISIS. There were a few shots where the heroes are tag-teaming a villain while Nazi soldiers are firing guns offscreen (at civilians?) which almost makes one think the heroes care more about grudge matches than saving people. I was confused as to why Overgirl and Dark Archer, seeking Supergirl's heart, target an Earth on which Kara doesn't live. I missed the explanation for why only Sarah, Jax, Stein and Mick were at the wedding while the other Legends weren't. These are small issues.

My main problem with CRISIS: Reverse Flash has gone from confusing to inexplicable. LEGENDS got confused with showing Eobard Thawne after his erasure in the FLASH Season 1 finale. The explanation was confusing: he says he escaped into the Speed Force but was captured by Barry for "Flashpoint" except the Thawne in "Flashpoint" was the pre-Season 1 version. Ignore the reference to getting captured and it works to say that "Flashpoint" altered history so that Thawne, before he was wiped out of reality, escaped into the Speed Force, leading to his appearance in LEGENDS -- which ended with him being consumed by the wraith–form of Hunter Zolomon.

CRISIS offers no explanation for how Thawne survived that. It's also unclear why Thawne is working with the Earth–X villains, what he hopes to gain from associating with them or why this arrogant master manipulator and genius is following their plans and serving their goals. Thawne's time on THE FLASH was all about maneuvering Barry, Caitlin, Cisco, Joe and others. His tenure on LEGENDS was marked with controlling Damian and Merlyn. Downgrading Thawne to Overgirl and the Dark Archer's henchman is awkward.

Thawne also doesn't even offer any explanation for why he's played by Tom Cavanagh beyond a joke. He might as well have said, "Matt Letscher was busy this week." There's also a serious problem with Cavanagh's performance as Thawne which recalls neither the measured, aloof manipulator of Dr. Wells or the smug, superior antagonist of LEGENDS.

Instead, Cavanagh plays Thawne as clownishly malicious and it's a strange acting choice. Previously, Cavanagh and Letscher gave Thawne a restrained danger where, because he was so distant, you could never sure if he'd be (faux) avuncular or terrifyingly homicidal. But this time, Cavanaugh's Thawne is so unsubtle that he's predictable and because he's following Overgirl and the Dark Archer's orders, he's not scary. He's just silly.

And then we come to the end where Barry for some reason doesn't kill or incapacitate Thawne. I'm not sure what to think. The truth is, I too would hesitate to kill Thawne because I have no idea how he's alive again or why he's working with the Earth X villains. Without any clear sense of where Thawne's at in his personal timeline, without any clarity as to how killing Thawne could change the past or present (last time, a black hole opened), it makes a sort of sense for Barry to let Thawne go.

The problem is that none of this is onscreen. It's confusing why Barry thinks Thawne will simply leave the fight because the Flash pinned him. It's baffling why Thawne exits the scene willingly rather than rejoining the battle and forcing Barry to fight him again. Thawne's motivations are unfathomable to me here.  Now it falls to subsequent FLASH episodes to explain how Thawne is alive and what he wants now.

It's rather sad that the most significant villain of THE FLASH has become a muddled mess of confusing exposition and mystifying contradictions and reduced to being Dark Archer and Overgirl's pawn. Cavanagh doesn't play this as the original Thawne; I wonder if this was an acting choice or the result of Cavanagh not having played this character for over two years and forgotten what he was like, or if he was trying to distinguish Thawne from Harry and went too far.

The simplest explanation, of course: this isn't Eobard Thawne. It's a time remnant.

I think the DCEU brand is toxic at this point. MAN OF STEEL was a decent start to a Superman series, but the destruction porn rankled the audience and the box office was mediocre for a cultural icon. WB sought to raise the profile by adding Batman into the sequel -- but as BVS developed, WB then wanted to chase after what Marvel had and what the TRANSFORMERS, JAMES BOND, SPIDER-MAN and other franchises were pursuing in Marvel's wake -- a cinematic universe.

As a result, BVS was now saddled with Wonder Woman and cameos from the Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg and setting up a JUSTICE LEAGUE film that would face an invasion from Apokolips. Zack Snyder and screenwriters Chris Terrio and David Goyer found a way to tell an operatic, epic tale of an angry man against a human god while meeting the shopping list WB had given them. Understandably, such a movie was going to be about three hours long -- and then WB ordered that an hour be cut from the film.

As a result, BVS was an incoherent mess of confusing plotlines that only the director's cut would finally explain. The vast majority of the world saw the often unfathomable cineplex version and viewed Zack Snyder as a director of incomprehensible, alienating films. SUICIDE SQUAD suffered from the same incoherence due to too many cut scenes. So, with a muted reaction to MAN OF STEEL, a severe distaste for BVS and SUICIDE SQUAD and WONDER WOMAN seen as an outlier because Snyder had nearly nothing to do with it, JUSTICE LEAGUE was (unfairly) expected to be more unwatchable confusion from the BVS director made even more incoherent by a different director coming aboard at the tail-end of the process.

The DCEU brand is synonymous with unpleasant, awkwardly edited, confusing filmmaking. Informant insists until he is blue in the face that BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN was a massive success, but WB wouldn't have hired Joss Whedon to alter JUSTICE LEAGUE in mid-production if they'd been satisfied with BVS' finances and critical reception. But the turnaround was too late and the overall perception of JUSTICE LEAGUE (a film I actually really enjoyed and want to see again soon) is that it was WB trying to imitate a Marvel movie and not pulling it off despite having *the* Marvel director doing it.

At this point, AQUAMAN is filmed and WONDER WOMAN was too successful to cancel a sequel. But I think what we're looking at is WB trying to salvage the brand by splitting the DCEU back into separate franchises so as to try to sell SUPERMAN, BATMAN, WONDER WOMAN, FLASH, GREEN LANTERN CORPS, CYBORG, HARLEY & JOKER and JOKER as standalone features rather than DCEU features. Part of this was already in the planning stages, but I expect that if the FLASHPOINT film is ever made, it will break up the shared universe so as to allow each property to pursue its own path and public standing rather than seeing the Snyder brand define every single one of them.

JUSTICE LEAGUE cost too much money and has brought in too little for WB try a sequel any time soon and a movie with one or two superheroes is going to be cheaper than a movie with six. I think the DC Expanded Universe is done. Shared universes cost too much and one failure affects every other project.

Well, I thought JUSTICE LEAGUE was really fun and a good movie.

A lot of the time, people unconsciously see themselves as pawns and well behind the line of being perpetrators.

They tend not to realize it never takes much to cross that line.

Disclaimer: everything below is based on memories and impressions of chatting with Torme via AOL almost two decades ago and may be coloured by personal bias and filling in blank areas with guesses and it was written hurriedly during a lunchbreak.

I asked Torme back in 2000 about his plans for the FBI plot and his answer was appropriately SLIDERS-esque. He explained to me: his approach to a story is not to lay out precisely what happens when and to whom. Instead, he creates a concept and a beginning that will allow him multiple options for additional stories and conclusions. Due to the improvisational nature of television, it's important to have lots of different paths available rather than a strict plan from which any deviation means losing direction.

In the case of the FBI, Torme and Weiss wanted to create an alternate group of interdimensional travellers who would be professional and authoritarian. These federal agents would stand in stark contrast to the awkward ragamuffins that are the sliders. When the sliders encountered them, they would be in opposition.

Extrapolating from what Torme said: where the sliders blunder into situations, the FBI would be coolly mission-oriented, seeking to acquire intelligence, weapons and technology. Where the sliders are unwitting forces of anarchy who bring down governments, the FBI consider it appropriate to uphold existing power structures.

To me, Torme's view opens the door to many potential conflicts: the FBI want to reproduce biological weapons, but the sliders want to destroy them. The FBI want to help the fascist regime put down the resistance that the sliders have joined. The FBI want to curtail the interdimensional interference that the sliders regularly cause. The FBI consider the sliders to be domestic terrorists while the sliders view them as authoritarian pawns.

According to Torme: Bennish's presence on the federal agents' team makes the agents seem more professional in contrast and also showcases Bennish's hypocracy: he sides with whichever side he thinks will benefit him most.

Also according to Torme: to wrap up the FBI plot, if needed, numerous options existed. The FBI and the sliders could come to a truce where the FBI can't take the sliders home but can take messages for their families. The FBI catch up to the sliders and, because John Rhys-Davies wants to leave the show, the FBI manage take Arturo and only Arturo home (but, if John changes his mind, the FBI accidentally take the wrong Arturo home and the right one returns to the group).

One idea that Torme was keen on but chose not to pursue: the FBI weren't actually investigating Quinn's disappearance in "Summer of Love." They were investigating Michael Mallory's disappearance, had been for years, believing he faked his death to join a foreign power to help them make weapons. The FBI believed the vortex to be some unknown armament. Quinn's disappearance made them suspect that Quinn had been recruited by his father.

This would lead to a story where the FBI, investigating on a parallel Earth, could clear Michael's name and find that Michael had gone into hiding to protect his family and country. Alternatively, Michael could've been a traitor (like in "Gillian of the Spirits") and Quinn would embrace the Professor as his true father figure. The FBI plot could end with Quinn having hope that his father was still alive back home. Or it could end with Quinn knowing that a confrontation with his father was lying in wait should he ever get back. But when Torme wrote "The Guardian," he no longer saw Michael Mallory as secretly alive; he now saw Michael's value as the ghost of Quinn's childhood.

... this is what it was like to talk to Torme. In fact, I think this is why, nine years later, Transmodiar talked to Torme and Torme couldn't remember what his plans were. He hadn't planned. He'd imagined multiple paths of potential development.

None of the above is the secrets SLIDERS was building to reveal. This isn't the uncovered mythology of the series. They're just things Torme thought about doing but may not have done and probably wouldn't have done because other possibilities would have presented themselves over time. Quinn was supposed to be an awkward geek; that wasn't what was onscreen, so Torme changed his approach. Also, Torme was working with Robert K. Weiss and Weiss would've had his own ideas for what might come.

During our talk, the only certainty Torme was absolutely sure of for the FBI was this: if SLIDERS had been more successful, it'd occasionally be necessary to do an episode where the regular cast would have limited onscreen roles to get ahead on another episode. This happened with THE X-FILES where supporting cast members would take center-stage for a week. In that event, there might have been an episode devoted to the FBI and Bennish having an adventure.

Torme's philosophy of writing is neatly summarized in Quinn's speech about stardust in "The Guardian." Torme didn't make plans; he made possibilities. And as time passed, those possibilities would be dismantled and reconfigured to form new paths. That's what we should expect from the co-creator of SLIDERS.

So, I'm pretty happy with how the Tab A 10.1 is working out as an instantly on bedside computer. It's superior to my iPad Mini 2 by performing smoothly and having a bigger screen to justify picking it up over a phone. But. Occasionally, as I grip it to type or rotate it in my hands, there's a click or a creak, like the casing seal isn't entirely rigid. Even though Samsung did a great job of making the plastic have a faintly metallic feel, plastic just doesn't feel as solid as the aluminium of the iPad. But... tablets just don't do enough to justify spending more (or any) money on them.

It'll probably feel fine once a case comes in the mail and I grip the outer frame of the case instead of the tablet.

Still getting to grips with using a 10 inch tablet again. Given how phones have gotten bigger, it made no sense to buy a device that wasn't much larger. The main problem was input. The Samsung Tab A 10.1's capacitive buttons were too easily triggered by holding the tablet and some had to be disabled with a third party app. Also, the screen is too big for typing with Google Keyboard which required my thumbs to stretch farther than possible. And for some reason, Google Keyboard's one handed mode is disabled on tablets, so I had to install Swype for a right sided keyboard.

Most apps are just stretched phone apps, but given that this device is for video and the web browser, it's fine. Once again, I would not have bought this if not for it being priced as a discounted open box item that cost exactly what I got for selling the iPad Mini 2.

Always good to see tom2point0 here, he doesn't show up often enough. I have been listening to REWATCH PODCAST cover THE FLASH (90s series) with pleasure, but I didn't have time to watch the actual show, so I can say nothing other than noting that I continue to enjoy Tom and Cory's banter during my commutes and hikes.

DISCOVERY, however, most definitely does not present the secret origin of Section 31. Their name, Section 31, comes from the original 22nd century Starfleet charter: Article 13, Section 31 allows extraordinary measures against extreme threat. Starfleet and Section 31 pre-date the Federation and DISCOVERY.

Section 31 appeared on ENTERPRISE in the year 2155 as a secret cabal within the United Earth government and Starfleet with Enterprise-armsmaster Malcolm Reed a former member. Given that DISCOVERY takes place in 2256, it's clearly not Section 31's starting point. But this does give me an excuse to talk about Section 31.

The reason the DS9 creators came up with Section 31: they were telling war stories and needed to show that the Federation, like any government, would engage in bloody and covert black-ops missions. But Gene Roddenberry's TNG-era declaration that the future was a perfect world had become so entrenched in the franchise that the writers couldn't overturn it. So they introduced Section 31.

From their debut in "Inquisition":

                    BASHIR
            So, are you going to tell me who
            you are? Who you work for?

                    SLOAN
            I would think it's obvious -- the
            same people you work for. The
            Federation. Starfleet.

                    BASHIR
            You don't expect me to believe
            you're with Internal Affairs, do
            you?

                    SLOAN
            Of course not. Internal Affairs
            is a competent department, but...
            limited.

                    BASHIR
            Then what department are you with?

                    SLOAN
            Let's just say I belong to another
            branch of Starfleet
            Intelligence... our official
            designation is Section 31.

                    BASHIR
            Never heard of it.

                    SLOAN
            We keep a low profile. It works
            out better that way... for all
            concerned.

                    BASHIR
            And what does "Section 31"
            do -- aside from kidnapping
            Starfleet officers?

                    SLOAN
            We search out and identify
            potential dangers to the
            Federation.

                    BASHIR
            And once identified?

                    SLOAN
            We deal with them.

                    BASHIR
            How?

                    SLOAN
            Quietly.

                    BASHIR
            So if I had turned out to be a
            Dominion agent -- what would've
            happened to me?

                    SLOAN
            We wouldn't be standing here
            having this conversation.

                    BASHIR
            And Starfleet sanctions what
            you're doing?

                    SLOAN
            We don't submit reports or ask for
            approval for specific operations,
            if that's what you mean. We're an
            autonomous department.

                    BASHIR
            Authorized by whom?

                    SLOAN
            Section 31 was part of the
            original Starfleet charter.

                    BASHIR
            That was two hundred years ago.
            Are you telling me you've been
            operating on your own ever since?
            Without specific orders?
            Accountable to nobody, but
            yourselves?

                    SLOAN
            You make it sound so... ominous.

                    BASHIR
            Isn't it? If what you say is
            true, you function as judge, jury
            and executioner. I'd say that's
            too much power for anyone.

                    SLOAN
            I admit it takes exceptional
            people to do what we do -- people
            who can sublimate their own
            ambitions to the best interests of
            the Federation.
                (a beat)
            People like you.

                    BASHIR
            Me?

                    SLOAN
                (nods)
            We're on the same team. We
            believe in the same principles
            that every other Federation
            citizen holds dear.

                    BASHIR
            But you violate those principles
            as a matter of course.

                    SLOAN
            In order to protect them.

                    BASHIR
            I'm sorry. But the ends don't
            always justify the means.

                    SLOAN
                (calmly)
            Really? How many lives do you
            suppose you've saved in your
            medical career?

                    BASHIR
            I don't see what that has to do
            with anything.

                    SLOAN
            Hundreds... thousands? Do you
            suppose that those people give a
            damn that you lied to get into
            Starfleet Medical? I doubt it.

    Bashir is momentarily thrown by Sloan's argument --

                    SLOAN
            We deal with threats to the
            Federation that jeopardize its
            very survival. If you knew how
            many lives we've saved, I think
            you'd agree that the ends do
            justify the means.I'm not afraid
            of bending the rules every once
            in a while -- if the situation warrants
            it. And I don't think you are either.

                    BASHIR
            You've got the wrong man, Sloan.

                    SLOAN
                (confident)
            I don't think so. In time, you'll
            come to agree with me.

With Section 31, DS9 could show the Federation engaging in assassination, fraud, genocide, false flag operations, propaganda, facism, torture, psychological manipulation, violation of civil liberties and sheer ruthlessness -- but because Section 31 was a disavowed branch of Starfleet with no official sanction or existence, the writers left themselves an out. They could say the Federation's hands were clean by putting all the responsibility on Section 31. As seen in "Inquisition":

                    SISKO
            There's no record of a Deputy
            Director Sloan anywhere in
            Starfleet. As for Section 31...
            that's a little more complicated.
            Starfleet Command didn't
            acknowledge its existence. But
            they didn't deny it either.
            They simply said they'd look into
            it and get back to me.

                    BASHIR
            When?

                    SISKO
            They didn't say.

                    KIRA
            Sounds like a cover-up to me.

                    BASHIR
            Is it possible that the Federation
            would condone this kind of
            activity?

                    ODO
            Personally, I find it hard to
            believe that they wouldn't. Every
            other great power has a unit like
            Section 31... the Romulans
            have the Tal Shiar, the
            Cardassians had the Obsidian
            Order...

                    BASHIR
            But what would that say about us?
            That we're no different than our
            enemies? That when push comes to
            shove, we're willing to throw away
            our principles in order to
            survive?

                    SISKO
            I wish I had an answer for you,
            Doctor.

Perhaps the greatest Section 31 story (there were only three) is "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges" where Section 31 manipulates Dr. Bashir into staging an assassination and framing an ambassador to maneuver a more controllable ally onto the political chessboard.

Dr. Bashir figures out the plan and needs Admiral Ross to stop it. Admiral Ross has always been an ally: he's allowed our heroes to skirt rules; he's tacitly encouraged the cast's crazier ideas; he's been the most pleasant and supportive admiral ever seen in STAR TREK.

Ross is Professor Arturo. Ross is Dr. Harry Wells. Ross is Dr. Martin Stein. Ross is Temporal Flux. Ross is Dad. Ross is suddenly debilitated by an illness and unable to help, and Section 31 wins. Later, Bashir confronts Ross, having realized: Ross faked his illness to allow Section 31 to proceed with its plans.

                    BASHIR
            And how long have you worked for
            Section 31?

                    ROSS
            I don't.

                    BASHIR
            Just a temporary alliance?

                    ROSS
            Something like that.

                    BASHIR
            And you don't see anything wrong
            with what happened?

                    ROSS
            I don't like it. But I've spent
            the last year and a half of my
            life ordering young men and women
            to die. I like that even less.

                    BASHIR
            That's a glib answer. And it's a
            cheap way of avoiding the fact
            that you've trampled on the very
            thing those men and women are out
            there dying to protect. Doesn't
            that mean anything to you?

                    ROSS
            Inter arma enim silent leges.

                    BASHIR
            "In time of war, the law falls
            silent." Cicero. So is that
            what we've become -- a twenty-
            fourth century Rome? Driven by
            nothing more than the certainty
            that Caesar can do no wrong?

                    ROSS
            This conversation never happened.
            You're dismissed.

Ross didn't kill anyone, didn't frame anyone; he simply chose to do nothing to prevent it and is therefore complicit. That's what makes 31 terrifying.

Despite the writers having left themselves a backdoor to say Section 31 is a rogue agency, it would be reasonable to take the view that Section 31 is the Federation and always has been.

Captain Lorca represents their values rather well. I think Lorca is one of them although there's the possibility that he doesn't know he's one of them. Section 31 has often maneuvered unwitting Starfleet officers into acting on their behalf.

Anyway. DS9's first two Section 31 episodes were great and can be read here:
http://www.st-minutiae.com/resources/scripts/542.txt
http://scifijaz.com/t/565.txt

Nice to hear you're happy with your hardware. How's the Samsung version of Android compared to the S4?

I was very reluctant to buy a tablet. The truth is that while I liked the iPad Mini 2 (until iOS 11 was forced on it), I was using it less and less. I had a tablet because web browsing on a phone used to be unworkable with fonts too small and data too costly, meaning it was best to read all my news feeds at home on wifi and do all my research and planning on my tablet. But data's gotten cheaper. Websites are built for mobile phones and smaller screens. So, while I might have preferred the tablet aesthetically, it was faster to do look things up and read news and messages on my phone.

Eventually, I found myself removing all my social media and email apps from the tablet because I wasn't using them enough and the tablet became a Netflix and PDF machine and a second screen for my online courses. I would play the tutorial videos on the tablet and execute the assignments and take notes on my laptop. If I were at home and were looking something up, I'd use the tablet.

But after the update, iOS just couldn't function. Udemy kept freezing up on me. Netflix would crash. I couldn't type. Websites wouldn't load. But because tablets have become so limited in their purpose, I couldn't justify buying another one. I couldn't justify buying an iPad Pro or Mini that I couldn't stop Apple from upgrading to an eventually unusable OS.

I switched to using my laptop for all my webwork, films and TV and used my phone for the online video courses. But I just couldn't maintain workflow with videos playing on a smaller size; I needed them on a larger screen so I could make out the details. I decided to get by with the phone and laptop combo, but if a new tablet could be purchased for the same money earned from selling the old one, that was acceptable.

There's this place in my town that sells open box tech. Recently, they got a bunch of Samsung Tab A 10.1's. I'm quite impressed with the polycarbonate casing and 1080p screen. Samsung's build of Android on this tablet is very restrained; it looks almost like the Google version once I replaced the launcher. The hardware is powerful.

It's a little cumbersome in that on the iPad, you could rest your fingers on the edge of the screen and the OS would know you weren't doing a long-press. Android isn't so clever and there are also capacitive buttons that mean you can't hold the tablet from the bottom frame. But I've figured out how to hold it on the buttonless edge with one hand and at the edge with another.

Android apps are almost all all 5.5 inch phone apps stretched out to 10 inches and some look downright silly -- but I don't really need it to do much more than run Chrome, Netflix and Udemy. I'm going to wait until the 14 day return period has ended before I root it, but I only need to do that to install a bluelight filter.

I can't exactly recommend any tablet given how it's a limited, luxury item and you can't do anything this 10-inch slab that you couldn't on a more compact phone. I just need one for my peculiar workflow.

This was the photo.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrY99ojUMAAGJZe.jpg

You mean you agreed with me agreeing with you?

But then why is Quinn played by Jerry in the family photo if the Pilot meant for Quinn to be 10 when his father died?

To quote TREK novelist Christopher Bennett:

Some of my favourite inconsistencies:

The original series took almost half a season to pin down the 23rd century era, with the time period referred to as the 21st or 28th century. Kirk at one point says he works for the United Earth Space Probe Agency before it became Starfleet and Earth became the Federation. Spock is emotional in the early episodes and made a rape joke. Kirk's initial in the first episode produced is "R." Spock refers to his parents in the past tense, but they guest-star later on. McCoy says that the "Vulcanians" were conquered by Earth.

From a production standpoint, the Starfleet arrowhead was meant to be for all starship crews, but for a number of TOS episodes, costumers misunderstood "Charlie X" in which the crew of the Antares had their own insignia (as merchant marines) and took that to mean each ship had its own individual badge when designing costumes. DISCOVERY uses the triangular symbol as intended rather than as it was onscreen.

With TNG's early seasons, Picard was a cruel leader prone to putting his people in difficult situations just to screw with them, Data was emotional, Troi experienced other people's emotions rather than being aware of them, Worf was animalistically feral, Starfleet regularly vacationed on pre-warp planets, holodeck matter existed outside the simulator, the Borg ignored organic life -- none of which was retained as Picard became gentle to the point of babying Barclay, Data became emotionless, Troi's powers dialed down, Worf became smart, the Prime Directive became much stricter and the Borg started assimilating people.

The mannered and bizarre Ferengi of TNG's Season 1 are not the capitalist caricatures of DS9, the makeup for Trills in TNG was ignored in DS9, Voyager travelled back to the 1990s where the Eugenics Wars, established in TOS, are not present or mentioned.

FIRST CONTACT and ENTERPRISE have warp drive in the 22nd century, but TOS' "Balance of Terror" established that the Earth-Romulan War unfolded at sublight speeds. TNG had Wesley depart Starfleet to ascend to higher planes of existence with the Traveler; DS9 had Worf become a Klingon ambassador by the finale "Nemesis" has him -- yet NEMESIS shows both back in Starfleet.

In "Operation: Annihilate!," Kirk's brother, Sam, is killed. Yet, in STAR TREK V, Kirk remarks, "I once lost a brother. I was lucky to get him back," referring to Spock and suggesting that Kirk has forgotten he had a sibling who died with his wife and left behind an orphaned nephew.

STAR TREK has never been a documentary. But if you must have an in-universe blanket explanation, the simplest route is that Data's trip to 19th century Earth in "Time's Arrow" and the time travel of FIRST CONTACT along with the Temporal Cold War of ENTERPRISE have caused some details of TOS to shift and some of the contradictions are due to the time travel ripples taking effect.

The novels and comic books, however, tend to offer rationalizations via new stories that weren't aired on TV or shown in theatres. The comic book adaptation for STAR TREK V amended Kirk's line about his brother to say that Kirk lost "two brothers" and was lucky to get "one back." My personal explanation for the error: Sam Kirk was probably, in an untelevised story, resurrected due to some VOYAGER-esque time travel rewind that retroactively erased his death.

And maybe there are many variants of Ferengi and Trills, we were seeing Picard during periods of indigestion during Season 1, Troi mastered her psi-powers, Data was experimenting with simulated emotion, the Earth-Romulan War unfolded in areas of space where warp drive couldn't be used, Worf got counselling, etc..

There's some stuff that's best ignored, however. It's grossly out of character for Spock as he took shape to joke that a woman who was sexually assaulted by an evil double of Captain Kirk enjoyed the experience. It is outrageous to claim, as TOS did, that no woman has ever captained a starship.

I prefer to simply think that these events didn't happen, much like Quinn shrugging off Wade being in a rape camp or spending a season finding coordinates to Kromagg Prime and a way to bypass the Slidecage only to blow both off in "Revelations."

And I don't think we need to restrict STAR TREK to technology that was feasible to render on TV in the 1960s; the show should reflect a future based on the world we have today. And on the level of TV production, there is really insufficient time to worry about it at all.

In a podcast, "Desperate Hours" author David Mack said that he read the TV scripts, passed along any contradictions he didn't think could be reconciled and some were amended and some weren't. He added that he offered the TV producers three paths for "Desperate Hours": he could describe the 60s Enterprise as being visually in line with 2017 DISCOVERY ships with holograms and jacketed uniforms and metallic surfaces. He could describe the 2017 DISCOVERY ships as being visually in line with the 60s STAR TREK with switches and dials and pastel colours.

Or he could describe both the 60s and 2017 ships exactly as they appeared onscreen -- and declare with a straight face that the 60s ships are in fact more advanced than the 2017 ships and have the characters consider the 60s style to be more futuristic than the DISCOVERY ships.

They asked him to take the third option. That said, a lot of this could be side-stepped if DISCOVERY were set in the 25th century and DISCOVERY has, for now, given no real reason why it's set in the 23rd aside from Michael Burnham being Sarek's adopted daughter.

I agree with Slider_Quinn21 that "The Flash Reborn" (hmm) didn't make much sense, but it was effective as a means of stepping away from some of Season 3's excesses (hmm). I didn't feel Caitlin was well-served by Season 3 which gave her an evil alternate personality for no real reason and this episode has made it a more interesting conflict while restoring Caitlin to our helpful, lively scientist. It was also a relief to see Barry more lighthearted after his angsty misery of Season 3 that seemed better suited to Oliver Queen than Barry Allen. It was a fun episode.

**

LEGENDS was also a lot of fun for me. On one level, I think it's strange to criticize LEGENDS time travel adventures with the view that you're bored with time travel. On another, it's fair to note that LEGENDS has an extremely repetitive formula for time travel: they enter an unfamiliar time period, get attacked by the locals and so it goes. The character arcs have been extremely shallow and when characters actually change, it's abrupt and jarring. Rip Hunter went from respecting the Legends to dismissing them between the Season 2 finale and the Season 3 premiere, for example.

I don't expect a lot from LEGENDS. It's a dumping ground for characters from ARROW and FLASH who have nowhere else to go; it's much more humour oriented. Sara working at Bed, Bath and Beyond was hilarious; Ray being a glorified intern because Felicity destroyed PalmerTech was very funny. It's a low bar. I really enjoy the running joke of Sara's absurd sex life.

Now I'm going to argue against myself.

Within the individual shows, STAR TREK is not clear on whether humanity has really achieved utopia or if they merely present themselves as one. The classic series during the Gene L. Coon episodes (Season 1, first half of Season 2) routinely criticizes Starfleet and the Federation. "Errand of Mercy" presents Kirk and Starfleet as warmongers gunning for conflict with Klingons. "Arena" showed the Federation (accidentally) encroaching on another species' territory and thought of as invaders. "Amok Time" has Starfleet wanting the Enterprise to put on a show of force for a recently brokered truce between two warring worlds.

There's the especially troubling episode, "A Taste of Armageddon," in which Starfleet is established to have General Order 24 where a starship captain can order that the population of an entire planet be extinguished if given sufficient cause.

Throughout the show, Kirk is routinely shown to be more humane and moral than the organization that employs him and the Federation is shown to be humanitarian in posture and PR, but no less imperialist as than the Klingons.

However, after Coon left the series in the middle of Season 2, latter writers took a more simplistic route, presenting Starfleet as interplanetary do-gooders and anyone against the Federation is simply evil. TNG took this latter approach. DS9 took the view that while within the Federation, it's easy to be a saint, it's not so easy in the Gamma Quadrant or on Bajor or for the Maquis and then had Section 31 bring back the original skepticism of the old show.

"Errand of Mercy" is a standout in its skepticism: Kirk meets what he perceives to be an underdeveloped world and offers them the Federation's help in turning their world into a paradise, to show them how to feed millions where they once fed hundreds, to give them scientific and engineering knowledge that will allow them to remake their planet, to educate every child and give health and knowledge to every inhabitant. But the script underscores how the offer is made because the Federation wants this world as a key strategic point against the Klingons, and Kirk is shown to be, in many ways, just as flawed as his enemies in this episode.

And yet, ENTERPRISE took the view that the Federation is benign, particularly with the Andorian/Tellarite three-parter in which both races set aside their differences thanks to Captain Archer's diplomacy and respect for both cultures. It's one of those cases where latter writers adopted the original writers' words but may have missed the meaning behind them. There's also, of course, the fact that the individual writers within STAR TREK's 60s run weren't on the same page either.

I'll wait until the season's over to have an opinion on the time period. But for now, I do wonder why they went the prequel route too. Maybe there's a reason.

I thought DISCOVERY was good, but the show is still a work in progress because the first two episodes are more about establishing the lead character's conflicts rather than establishing what the show will be.

DISCOVERY really captured the two sides of STAR TREK: the militaristic situations of threat and danger and the exploratory sense of adventure. The image of the Starfleet logo written in sand through a series of footprints is beautiful. Michael Burnham's delight at flying through space in an EVA suit to see what's out there is magnificently presented and it's right alongside situations of threat and danger where Starfleet's ideals of peace and discourse come up against a culture that sees strength through dominance and destruction.

Visually, the show's costuming and ship designs find an interesting middle ground between ENTERPRISE and STAR TREK: the uniforms are reminiscent of the NX-01 flight suits but with some of the decorations found in STAR TREK's tunics.

From a technological standpoint, however, DISCOVERY's tech seems far more advanced than all the shows taking place after DISCOVERY. Holographic communications were presented as startlingly new in DS9, so to see it here is jarring. The transporter works faster on DISCOVERY than in the original series. The force field technology holding back the vacuum of space when the ship's structure is smashed open was absent in the other shows.

The rebootquels had an in-universe explanation for why the 23rd century looked different from the 1960s show: the attack on the Kelvin caused Starfleet to amp up its military research and development to be able to fight off any such future attacks. The only real explanation DISCOVERY can offer, given that the producers say it's set in the original timeline, is that STAR TREK is a fictional creation and each series is an interpretation of a conjectural mythology rather than a documentary of an actual reality.

That's the only reason I can find for the Klingons being redesigned, an aesthetic move that dismisses ENTERPRISE's Augment virus explanation for why the Original Series Klingons looked human.

For the technology, there are any number of in-universe explanations. Holographic tech may have proven to be insecure, the slower transporter may have included more safety measures, the force field tech became obsolete with advancements in artificial gravity. The average viewer who may not have seen the 60s show won't be troubled. I wondered if newcomers might be confused at how Michael putting her hand between her captain's neck and shoulder somehow knocked her unconscious, but I think it's fair to say that Spock's iconic status means the Vulcan nerve pinch is known by all.

It's interesting -- for the longest time, I couldn't really accept ENTERPRISE as a prequel to the original series. In terms of writing and design, it was really a prequel to TNG. DISCOVERY feels like a prequel to the 2009 rebootquel.

There is a novel, STAR TREK: DESPERATE HOURS which has the DISCOVERY characters meeting the characters of "The Cage" and the writer, David Mack, will have to find some way to reconcile two very disparate visions of the twenty-third century.

DEFENDERS was really disappointing, but I also wasn't surprised because it continues IRON FIST's bizarre obsession with the Hand, a vaguely defined collection of mysterious personalities speaking in vagaries about a mythology that is more nonsensically incoherent than the X-FILES myth-arc. It's completely unclear what their goals are, why those goals are reached through criminality, why Elektra is so critical to those goals and the answers we do get are even more confusing than the questions.

IRON FIST established that there were multiple factions to the Hand with Bakuto being an enemy of Madame Gao; DEFENDERS has them teaming up. IRON FIST declared that there were warring segments of the organization; DEFENDERS has all the players sitting together. DAREDEVIL's second season had the organization supposedly dealt a blow yet they continue to have infinite numbers of disposable ninjas to throw at our heroes. The Hand is an amorphous collection of contradictory incoherence and DEFENDERS has endless scenes of the Hand villains engaging in tedious discussions of nothing.

Elektra is a pathetic villain with the writers consistently having the villains highlight how she hasn't been at all successful against the Defenders to the point of bringing in anonymous henchmen for her to kill to try to establish her sense of threat. Then there's the big reveal -- that the island of Manhattan (which weighs approximately 3 billion tonnes) is built on exactly one dragon skeleton and extracting some vaguely defined substance will cause the island to collapse.

I'm not sure what's more ridiculous, the idea that an entire city is built on such a comparatively tiny structure and no one ever noticed --  or the idea that Elektra is supposed to be dangerous.

There's also the fact that DEFENDERS can't even figure out if the Hand destroyed K'un Lun or not, at times saying they did so, at others saying it was someone else, and later saying they hope to return to the city that was destroyed by either them or others. What!?

The DEFENDERS writers also seem deeply aggravated with the Iron Fist character: Stick calls him the stupidest Iron Fist in history and the series repeatedly ties Danny Rand to a chair or a stretcher and swaps him out with Colleen Young.

For a superhero show, DEFENDERS seemed to consist largely of people sitting around having slow, boring conversations about nothing whatsoever with the action rarely ever capitalizing on Daredevil, Iron Fist, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage somehow combining their abilities or working together at all. The series, despite the writers' obvious disdain for IRON FIST, focuses its attention on the Hand and the Hand is terrible. I wasn't the biggest fan of AVENGERS, but I did think it was a good call to give minimal attention to the villains and focus largely on the heroes interacting. DEFENDERS has one big episode of interaction and the other seven don't go to much effort to put them together.

DEFENDERS is generic, dull, slow, deeply uninteresting and for me, a real disappointment.

In the comments, Rosenbaum says he’s interviewing Kreuk and Mack in future instalments. The last I heard of Mack, she’d fallen in with this creepy cult leader and his weird harem.

Michael Rosenbaum is fascinating, a bundle of self-aware neuroticism and bombastic lunacy with a strangely insincere demeanor that is in stark contradiction to a deep sensitivity and compassion. His goofy hipster routine is curiously at odds with Tom Welling being a low-key construction worker who staggered backwards into modeling and acting who had a year or so of partying before deciding to settle down and get married with a steady job in construction -- well, television.

Basically, Tom Welling became, at age 22, what Jerry O'Connell became at age 32. Can you imagine Jerry deciding to get married and settle down during the first season of SLIDERS? Jerry was like Jeff Winger without the smarts.

It's strange to compare Tom and Jerry. They were both athletic, attractive actors playing socially awkward young men. Their characters had exactly the same dress sense in flannel and jeans and moppy hair. The only difference between their clothes is that Clark wore workboots while Quinn wore sneakers.

I once remarked that Tom Welling would have made a god-awful Quinn Mallory because Jerry was, despite his flaws, a very well-trained actor whereas Tom was a cluelessly one-note actor with zero imagination and no ability to play a scientific mind. Now I'm not so sure.

The thing is that Jerry O'Connell was an extroverted being of hypercaffeinated sexual appetites while Tom Welling was and remains introverted and withdrawn and while he partied, he didn't much like it. Jerry was only playing an awkward geek. Tom actually is one, albeit in the body of a football player. Jerry O'Connell saw SLIDERS as his ticket to an open bar at all the good nightclubs. Tom saw SMALLVILLE as his job. But unlike SLIDERS, SMALLVILLE was so well-marketed that Tom knew -- if he did a good job on SMALLVILLE, he'd never have to work again for the rest of his life.

And so, to live up to his responsibilities, Tom blocked out anything that wasn't related to his work on SMALLVILLE (including his marriage). From age 22 to 32, he simply had no personal life. He barely even saw his wife and his marriage failed. Michael notes how Tom started out in Season 5 having put on weight because he had spent the summer eating heavily and realized he could never do that again. Even when he wasn't working, he had to think about work.

Tom Welling committed to SMALLVILLE and engaged with it fully as a creator, producer and director; Jerry may have had those same credits, but he never understood his character in the way Tom got Clark Kent. Could Tom have played a scientist? Jerry O'Connell thinks it absurd that he himself played a scientist. Tom would have given it his best.

It was interesting to hear how Tom regarded modeling and acting: it was simply a job much like construction was simply a job. But he assessed the requirements and impact and handed his whole life over to his character because he knew people were counting on him.

I thought it was hilarious how Michael Rosenbaum described his resentment and irritation with Tom; it aggravated Michael deeply that Michael had spent years honing his craft and paying his dues with one lousy independent film after another. Meanwhile, Tom did some male modeling and became the lead of a hit TV show based on nothing but his chiseled facial features.

Michael then explains that this resentment vanished when Tom was downright apologetic about his lucky breaks and dismissive of his own talents and eager to learn from Michael's acting ability.

Michael describes an absurd event during the filming of the SMALLVILLE pilot:  Michael approached Kristin Kreuk and apologized in advance were he to sprout an erection while working with her. Kreuk protested, "But we don't even have any scenes together." Michael responded, "Yeah. I know!"

It's the sort of joke where -- if you're not the most socially skillful individual, it will come off very badly. You have to have off-the-charts charisma to make remarks like that and come off as amusing and endearing as opposed to creepy and harassing and Michael has it.

I dunno what Apple thinks they're getting away with in claiming that this thick-framed phone has no bezel.

I continue to be happy with my Moto G4 on Nougat, which stood in for my DSLR camera last week due to a crisis and acquitted itself rather well. That said, if the Samsung A5 ever drops to a much lower price...

I usually keep the GPS and Bluetooth disengaged on my phone. It saves battery. But I've locked the  CPU base speed now. As a result, the battery drain doesn't seem terribly severe at all. Three hours on data with full GPS and the Bluetooth connected to both my smartwatch and earbuds and the battery only went down 10 per cent.

I upgraded my Moto G4 from Android 6.0.1 (Motorola's Marshmallow build) to Nougat (7.1.2, a custom Lineage OS ROM). Some very interesting results.

Apparently, all this time, my phone has had a notification light that the Motorola Marshmallow software ignored. Why install a light and not write software to use it? Lineage OS uses the light. A flashing notification light uses much less energy. Previously, the phone used Ambient Display which would flash notifications across the screen and every time you picked the device up. But this was a huge power drain because it meant keeping the light and motion sensors permanently engaged to detect unpocketing, flipping and picking up.

The phone can now read the battery life of my Bluetooth earpiece and headphones where it couldn't before. Bluetooth performance on the whole seems to be greatly improved with devices pairing instantly and automatically when they previously had to be connected individually, manually and repeatedly.

There are a lot of effective little tweaks, too. Messaging apps now hyphenate words. Security features will allow the phone to stay unlocked in sleep if you keep it on your person and stay in motion. Snapchat didn't load before; it does now.

And everything is responsive: apps load faster, all the animations have been additionally smoothed. The camera app used to take 4 - 5 seconds to load up, now it takes 1 second, if that.

The phone was now so fast that it began to overheat regularly. That's right! All eight CPU cores were perpetually at maximum clockspeed. The phone got so hot that I had to put it in the freezer while I tried to think out what to do.

The phone's battery drained from 100 to 0 in five hours of mixed use and in sleep mode. Even when idling, the phone was extremely heated. I set the phone to Power Saver mode and its longevity stretched to six hours.

Eventually, I decided to lock the CPU to the lowest clockspeeds. The Moto G4's processor contains two quad-core arrangements, the first at 0.84 GHz to 1.2 GHz, the second from 0.96 GHz to 1.5 GHz. I've set the processors permanently at the base speed and this put the phone back to the icy cool it had on Marshmallow. I'm hoping the multi-core setup will negate any performance loss for me. It seems good enough for Facebook and Twitter and ebooks and Chrome.

I haven't noticed any loss of speed beyond a slightly longer pause to wake the phone from sleep mode (which is better than the phone going dead inside six hours). But I suspect that if I were a gamer (and I'm not), the processor being locked to lowest speed would lead to slow load-times and poor framerates.

If I were Warner Bros., I would fire Whedon off BATGIRL immediately and hire Joe Wright (HANNA) to direct and Doris Egan (HOUSE) to write the script -- not because I believe the stories about Whedon, but because the optics are too bad to ignore.

I don't have much behind the scenes knowledge of Whedon's behaviour. I've heard two versions of the Charisma Carpenter firing; the first is that she was fired for getting pregnant. The second is that she became difficult to work with following a miscarriage due to her depression and grief, resulting in highly acidic behaviour towards the other cast and crew that led to her removal from the series.

I have always found it strange to accuse Whedon of celebrating abuse and rape in his writing when fictional characters are designed to suffer for dramatic purposes. Being a feminist and having sex with lots of different women are not mutually exclusive values.

But having sex outside of the committed marriage to which you've agreed is unacceptable. If you want to be a player, don't marry someone as your one and only. It is also unacceptable to engage in romantic or sexual relationships with women whom you employ and whose careers you control; there are inherent power imbalances that are destructive.

I hope that Kai Cole's account isn't true. Whedon's non-denial denial, however, was so empty that it made Cole's account of being gaslit and traumatized to be all the more credible. As far as the world is concerned, Whedon cheated on his wife constantly and he had affairs with people with whom he was in a position of authority and control. He allowed his wife to think they were monogamous, meaning she had no knowledge of what STDs she might be exposed to, and he knowingly and indifferently traumatized her with his infidelities.

If you have any details, please share them. However, if this is going to be another Wil Wheaton situation where you allude vaguely and never offer specifics, please don't.

In the Bryan Singer case, Singer was unequivocal in declaring his innocence and was able to prove that he had been in Toronto when his accuser claimed Singer had raped him in Hawaii. The plaintiff in that case was later exposed as a serial liar and conman. In this instance, Whedon has refused to comment, allowing these accusations to stand unchallenged.

From a public relations standpoint, it looks true. If Whedon isn't going to defend himself, then he needs to wrap up his work on JUSTICE LEAGUE, then leave film, TV and comics. His reputation as it stands will now damage every female-forward project he touches.

Hmm. I ran into something similar on Reddit back in 2015; when sharing SLIDERS REBORN, my posts were blocked as spam and I had to contact the moderator who made me a pre-approved poster. It happens. Still...

Craig Byrne, the creator of KSiteTV is a very interesting figure in fandom. Full disclosure: there is bad blood between us. Fuller disclosure: I was entirely in the wrong in our dispute as I was an impulsive teenager who had yet to learn that my crazy rage should be put into fiction as opposed to interaction on Byrne's SMALLVILLE message board. It would drive me crazy that Clark/Lana fans would mock Chloe and I was vitriolic and insulting. It would drive me crazy that fans would ship Clark and Lex when I saw them as brothers.

Today, I realize that people enjoy art on their own terms and see no need to demand that anyone appreciate content with my views, but at the time, I considered anyone who disagreed with me on highly subjective matters to be deficient and malicious. I must confess that I am deeply ashamed of my behaviour, particularly for how my remarks came off as homophobic. Byrne banned me. He was right to do it.

Anyway. We sometimes run afoul of the specific culture in different fandoms. The culture of KSiteTV is, I find, decidedly corporate; Byrne didn't actually enjoy SMALLVILLE despite creating the premier SMALLVILLE site, KryptonSite. In his personal blog, he was very critical and mocking of the show and on the boards themselves, he was indifferent.

But because he ran KryptonSite, he opened the door to networking with the show's staff and this led to Byrne writing the official guides and companion books for SMALLVILLE as well as creating KSiteTV, a sci-fi fantasy TV news site. While Byrne made fan interaction available, it was all to build an audience for his empire and he served fans in order to monetize fandom (and feed some of that money back into serving fans).

We should all admire how he took his hobby, writing about TV, and turned it into a career. However, the KSiteTV empire is ultimately to serve Craig Byrne, to fuel his books, to develop his audience and to increase his ad revenue. That is perfectly fair; it's his website. Why shouldn't he find a way to earn money from doing what he loves?

But as a result, the corporate culture of KSiteTV is at odds with promoting other people's tie-in materials because it was designed to promote KSiteTV's materials.

With the LOIS & CLARK fandom, Tom and I encountered a set of fans who saw LOIS & CLARK as a cult show with a specific narrative around the behind the scenes story. That narrative was entirely about blaming the Season 2 - 4 producers for any story directions the fans didn't like, much like we do in SLIDERS fandom.

However, in my research, I found that the Season 2 - 4 producers were actually working under severe duress from network directives. I pointed this out, Tom pointed this out, and the L&C fans got upset because our information did not reinforce the cult TV culture of blaming the names that appeared in the L&C credits as opposed to finding fault with the ABC network administration.

And with SLIDERS, Tom and Cory fit right in because SLIDERS' fan culture is that of a Do-It-Yourself group. SLIDERS was so badly mistreated and neglected that we fans had to do everything short of making the show by ourselves.

We couldn't trust the actual producers on the show to be honest with fans; Temporal Flux and the Expert had to offer their services and when Season 5 story editor Keith Damron portrayed TF and the Expert as delusional liars, fandom considered TF and the Expert to be far more credulous and reliable than an official staff member and history proved this view to be correct.

We had to make our own DVDs because Universal's box set put them out in the wrong order. We had to make our own DVD cases because of the ridiculous foam cases. We had to make our own episode guides because the one written and published for a price was based on scripts rather than episode viewings.

We had to make our own tie-in novels because Universal couldn't be bothered. We had to make our own twentieth anniversary special.

I've been informed that it was insane to write a six-part screenplay series for a third-tier 90s show that collapsed upon itself after 22 episodes and that it was even crazier to rope the two premier podcasters for the show into recording an installment that mocks my plotholes and pokes fun at my misjudgements and lapses of logic.

But that's the DIY nature of SLIDERS -- which is why Rewatch Podcast fit right into our multiverse.

I think it was a huge mistake to attempt to tell the story of Clark putting on the suit for the first time while avoiding any shots where he was actually wearing it. It'd probably have been best if the Darkness plotline had been wrapped up as the second-to-last episode season finale with the actual finale being a flash forward set 5 - 10 years later with Superman only ever seen at a distance as a blur of special effects. But maybe they felt they'd used that idea already with the flash forward in the homecoming episode.

Tom and Cory: nice work on the FLASH intro! I really liked Cory's comments about the costume and Tom's observations about John Wesley Shipp's musculature. My favourite parts were the remarks about the unaired JUSTICE LEAGUE pilot and the proposed WB FLASH series. I'd never even heard of the latter!

I actually haven't seen THE FLASH (1990) outside of the pilot episode. It looked like a show that was groundbreaking and special in the time in which it was made, but a bit too slow for me to watch when new episodes of the CW's FLASH were airing. However, I will be taking this journey back to the 90s with the Rewatch Podcast and I'm eager to react to both the show and their reactions.

My feelings about THE FLASH (1990) are exactly the same as my feelings about QUANTUM LEAP, so there's another show that I probably wouldn't watch on my own but will for Tom and for Cory.

So, we're coming up on the end of THE X-FILES comics where Mulder and Scully take on the Trump administration. Trump doesn't ever appear on the page -- he's heard in a phone call with a hilarious pastiche of his incoherent repetition of key words. The plot is that due to the White House's overall ineptitude, they've failed to notice that their staffers have been infiltrated and replaced by aliens plotting to bring the planet to nuclear war.

The other option could be that Durance is playing a younger Alura and Astra and they'll use makeup to take a decade off her face.