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I'm happy to report that I have completed the first draft of the final SLIDERS REBORN script. It's 144 pages right now. I'm going to give myself until December 30 to review, edit, take Slider_Quinn21's suggestions into account and also rewatch some SLIDERS episodes and redo all the dialogue so that my caricatures will become more accurate pastiches of the actors. But we're all set for a December 31 rollout! I can't believe we're here.

Slider_Quinn21 has been reading my script pages. It's a new experience for me. With the previous installments, editors read the outlines, but nobody (had time to or could bear to) read the finished scripts before they were posted online.

Something hilarious he observed -- he said that my Arturo dialogue seemed grossly overdone, too many big words, which I found really funny. I like to think that I've internalized all the characters' voices. But the truth is, after each script, I have to take a day to rewatch four episodes of SLIDERS ("As Time Goes By," "Last Days," "The King is Back" and "Eggheads") and then I go through the scripts and rewrite all the dialogue with the actors' deliveries and mannerisms recently in mind. At this point, my Arturo has become a caricature of a caricature. Damn it.

**

Nigel cautioned me that my outline as he read it would result in a thousand page script. I'm at page 90 or so, I'm on the verge of the final action set-piece and the conclusion. I think I should not have sent him the outline that I sent him. It was not an outline. It was a rambling stream of consciousness resource document. What I should have done, instead, was convert the outline into a proper beat sheet and apply all the truncation/shortening/editing/streamlining that I'm doing now as I write the script and then he could have reviewed it properly. This would be very important to apply to my next SLIDERS script except I don't think that I will write one. :-)

Last season, I found the anti-Olicity shippers to be absurd and crazy in their militance against the Felicity character. This year, I find that the Olicity shippers have gone completely insane on Tumblr and Facebook to the point of one crazy person regularly referring to Stephen Amell's wife as "Voldemort" and saying it's bizarre that Amell and Emily Bett Rickards aren't a couple.

... it's unbelievably creepy. As someone who considers himself a fan of the Oliver/Felicity pairing -- I consider all the scenes where Felicity and Oliver to have heart-to-hearts to be Olicity scenes. Maybe it's not romantic anymore, but it's a friendship and a partnership and a highly enjoyable onscreen pairing, albeit a now-platonic one. I thought it really showed the practical sides of both characters where not being a couple didn't mean not being friends and allies.

I am, however, extremely relieved to be rid of all the scenes where Felicity is a perfect superwoman desired by all and to be free of all the Felicity/Oliver angst and fighting plots. I'd rather stick to the same stuff Stephen Amell wants to stick to -- street-level crimefighting plots.

I am also confused about Artemis rejecting Oliver for having once been a murdering vigilante by teaming up with another murdering vigilante who also kills civillians and police officers. The actress said in a CBR.com interview, however, that Artemis' motivations would be very gradually revealed and that she had her own reasons for working with Prometheus.

I'm happy to see Laurel back, I hope it makes her fans happy. I didn't object to her death, but I certainly think ARROW is better off with her return given that the fanbase seemed to love this character. Resurrection has been handled very poorly on this show before (Oliver) but also quite beautifully (Sarah) and also very amusingly (Deadshot). Hopefully, Laurel's return will go well. I'd be okay with revealing that Laurel and Oliver faked her death in Season 4 to give her some time to get away and recover with any discrepancies pinned on Flashpoint.

I'm kind of amused by Prometheus appearing on ARROW. Prometheus is a Grant Morrison creation (although the name had been used before) -- he's the child of two serial killers who were killed by the police and he became a supervillain to avenge his parents' death and kill as many superheroes as possible. In the comics, Prometheus' gimmick was that he had a helmet that let him copy, store and upload an infinite number of fighting styles and skills for any situation matched with obsessive research on every superhero he might fight with countermeasures planned for every hero and every kind of superpower. He distracted Green Lantern and shot him, filled the JLA headquarters with bombs that would go off if the Flash's superspeed movements were detected, etc.. Prometheus' true name or identity was never revealed.

ARROW's version of the character hasn't kept the appearance or the voice, but it's kept the obsessive research into our heroes and the ability to anticipate Oliver's every move and prepare twistedly cruel countermeasures for each one. It's a very impressive reimagining of the character; it's retrofitted him for the CW network, tailored him for ARROW, but kept the core characterization that made Prometheus so disturbing -- his insane preparation and horrific tactics.

**

I'm kind of with Informant that THE FLASH has got too many unexplained and uncharacteristic elements right now -- the philosopher's stone and Savitar and Alchemy come off as magical creatures without the cursory link to the exaggerated science fiction approach of Seasons 1 - 2. However, I'm still enjoying all the characters and the individual episodes, especially Caitlin Snow's arc and the character of HR (even though I would really like for Harry to come back permanently).

I think that's definitely a part of it. But I also think that maybe I lack certain skills in communicating my story summaries and also neglect certain elements of storytelling. You've read the first two SLIDERS REBORN scripts; the 4-page prequel and the first 95-page script. The script has a teenaged girl going into Quinn's abandoned basement to drink and experiencing an interdimensional phenomenon to kick off the story.

The original outline gave no explanation for why the girl goes into Quinn's basement. She's just there because... the writer wanted SLIDERS REBORN to begin in the same place as the Pilot. The first editor told me off for failing to include basic motivational reasoning -- but there was a bit of overlap in that I'd started writing the script by the time he sent me that criticism.

When writing the script and distilling the ideas and concepts into actual pages in a screenplay, I realized I needed an explanation for why the girl goes into the basement. I decided to give her a drinking problem. And then I wrote that element into subsequent scenes -- and it's an element that is nowhere to be found in the outline. It was only when writing the screenplay that I realized it was needed. So, if I'm omitting such critical information from outlines and don't even realize they're needed until scripting, it's probably difficult for any editor to envision the final product based on the initial synopsis.

"Fake Wells"... ?

Who is HR?

I did enjoy it... but it was an interesting failure. A heartfelt, well-intentioned failure. On that subject, Slider_Quinn21 should check his email for script pages!!!

Grizzlor is mistaken, sadly. There is no news other than X-FILES scientific consultant Anne Simon reporting that negotiations have stalled.

However, that doesn't mean negotiations couldn't begin again at a later date. And, if nothing else, RussianCabbieLotteryfan has introduced me to the concept of search engine optimization sites and now I will know to dismiss them.

I don't think it worked. I agree that it had a lot of heart. It was fun to watch. But there were a lot of obvious production problems that took the shine off the crossover for me. It actually reminded me of the SMALLVILLE finale where the writers scripted a global conflict and then found that when rendering it onscreen, they had to tone it down repeatedly until the visuals seemed marginal compared to the massive scale indicated by the dialogue.

The main problem for me -- the FLASH installment sets up Oliver, Supergirl and Barry as the lead characters for the crossover. But then ARROW immediately sidelines all three of them in subplots and dream sequences to focus on the ARROW supporting cast (the recruits, Cisco and Felicity) and LEGENDS again does the same with Mick, Vixen, Stein, Cisco and Felicity). It's like the writers suddenly discovered that they could not film three episodes of Melissa Benoist, Grant Gustin and Stephen Amell in a week -- so their appearances are prominent in THE FLASH and then their presences are spread out in isolated segments across ARROW and LEGENDS. That, along with budgetary restrictions suddenly reduces a planetary situation to a skirmish on a single rooftop.

Then there's awkward moments like Oliver inexplicably benching Supergirl (almost as though the actress' schedule prevented her from being in the subsequent scene and an explanation was improvised on the spot), street-level heroes winning against Dominators when the 1951 soldiers couldn't to hold them off, the Dominators having had a truce with the United States but inexplicably kidnapping and murdering the President previously in THE FLASH, no attempt to mind control the heroes again -- and it's at this point, I'm reminded of how awkward I found the first AVENGERS movie.

This is something we seem to see quite often in superhero shows when they attempt an Earth-wide threat, but they can't pull it off visually and try to bluff and bluster through it.

THE FLASH has previously pulled off epic-level conflicts by keeping the geography enclosed even as the emotional stakes peaked (Barry versus Thawne with Firestorm and Green Arrow in the mix in Season 1, the race against Zoom in Season 2). LEGENDS' epic finale in its first season spread the team across different locations while fighting henchmen. SUPERGIRL's action used blurriness and distance to suggest rather than show the titantic forces in conflict. ARROW has generally stuck to the street level stuff. But here, they attempted INDEPENDENCE DAY: RESURGENCE and they seemed to be trying to punch above their weight.

It's funny -- I'm saying over in the STAR TREK thread that shows do not die just because Bryan Fuller doesn't write them, but I longed for the Fuller-technique in "Invasion." With HEROES, Fuller knew that if superfights shown in full would (a) look really lame on a TV budget and (b) didn't actually offer much meaningful content no matter how much fans craved them.

As a result, fights were always extremely brief, seen at a distance or in the aftermath and the focus was always on giving the actors some interesting conflicts to perform against each other with the epic clash of superhumans always blasting off camera and then over by the time we panned across to see it.

But still. I give the DC TV team credit for trying and yes -- there was a lot of heart.

Oh, come on. Bryan Fuller doesn't work on lots of TV shows that we all enjoy watching.

Ah, sorry. Well, I stand by my position. There's too much money to throw away here. Negotiations may stall, actors may wander, but THE X-FILES is coming back unless Gillian responds to my tweet to tell me otherwise.

TF's idea for replacing Barry Allen with Bart is hilariously bonkers. I love it. Does Grant Gustin play Bart in this scenario? That said, I think if they were going to swap Barry with Wally to adhere to DC's bizarre fiefdom divisions, they'd have done it by now -- and they got Deadshot back on ARROW and Deathstroke's returning too, so the leashes are being loosened gradually.

**

I didn't feel SUPERGIRL and THE FLASH were particularly different and will default to my opinion that Informant just hates fun. THE FLASH had all of the odd physical spacing issues of SUPERGIRL; the heroes find the President but demand for his release rather than Atom or Firestorm of Supergirl grabbing him and flying away. The 'training' with Supergirl consists of her invulnerably tolerating a barrage of energy blasts and projectile weapons. Barry's superspeed still has him ducking for cover from Firestorm and Heatwave when they should be frozen if Barry's in motion.

There's other writing issues. The President's abduction is played as some sort of strategic coup, but he didn't seem to have much to contribute and it's not like we lost Dumbledore or something. And Oliver at the end says the heroes must contact Lyla Michaels to inform them the Dominators are hostile as though their kidnapping the President didn't communicate that already?

You could drive yourself crazy thinking about these things. These are children's characters. Melissa Benoist and Grant Gustin are adorable. Stephen Amell did such a great job playing Grant's big brother in Eobard Thawne's secret man cave. Slider_Quinn21, my second SLIDERS REBORN editor has resigned and declared me to be mentally unfit; would you be interested in being the third?

I would wait for an official announcement of anything. It's not the first time Gillian Anderson's been misquoted or misunderstood regarding her willingness to return to the series. And given the huge ratings success of the revival, I can't see FOX giving up. Negotiations may stall, availability may delay production, but this is a situation where there's money to be made. If THE X-FILES isn't coming back, FOX and Chris Carter would at least explain why to the press and until they do that, we shouldn't doubt the series' return... even if some of us admittedly think the show was better off on permanent hiatus.

I'm sorry, but I have a terrible migraine right now, so I'm just going to side with Slider_Quinn21 on whatever this is about. I'm sure he has made some good and valid points about how the movie was lots of fun but has some problems when examined under scrutiny.

All the actors are available -- except Constance Wu who played Polly. At this point, there can't be any contractual obligations holding the actors to the show. I think, given how much time it's been, it might be best to treat PARALLELS is a rough pilot and simply start over again, but they might pick up on the series with a different set of characters who discover the Building or make Polly an occasional guest-star. It's a pretty wide concept, although I think that bringing in a new cast of characters when the original characters has only had the pilot would make THE BUILDING rival SLIDERS in being dismissive towards its leads.

Nigel has set me some additional constructive criticism -- he thinks that the bulk of the finale outline is filled with irrelevant and confusing incidents and events. He advises that I turn the end of the script into the middle and get rid of the existing middle.

He could be right. Not sure yet. I'd say that I'm attempting a certain effect -- the "As Time Goes By" effect as well as the DOCTOR WHO effect where the story is filled with throwaway ideas that could each potentially be their own episode, the idea being to show how rich and boundless the SLIDERS concept can be where you can have a superhero movie next to an eccentric dramedy next to a hard boiled detective story next to a father-daughter dramedy. Nigel is the second editor to work on SLIDERS REBORN and the second one to think the story is absolutely crazy and out of control. Nigel is the best SLIDERS writer to ever touch the property. Yes, I know we all like Steve Brown and Jon Povill and Mike Truman and Marc Scott Zicree and Chris Black, but Nigel is the best and if he has concerns, they're worth serious consideration.

I think I'll continue onward as I am, but if the script truly becomes unmanageable, then Nigel's proposal is Plan B. I can't deny that what I'm attempting is completely nuts. The entire project, a SLIDERS revival in the feature film format with some extras, is lunacy. But... I mean, I've been thinking of Ian McDuffie (the Think of a Roulette blog) and his appearance on SLIDERSCAST in which Jim Ford described the plot of "In Dinos Veritas" and Ian remarked: "Everything you said is just insane! Dinosaurs! Truth collars! Poachers! Holographic rangers! And then the poacher got eaten! One of the best parts of trying to explain SLIDERS to anyone is a synopsis. They’re always bonkers. Like a sentient worm that poops the elixir of life."

Maybe that's what's happened with Nigel here, although anyone who dismisses Nigel Mitchell's opinion does so at their peril.

So, I sent the outline for the final SLIDERS REBORN to SLIDERS genius Nigel Mitchell like a year ago. But it was written in a thin, vague, general sense without much detail and I found the story a bit lacking in depth, detailing an average day in San Francisco now that it's a city of overlapping alternate realities followed by a big finish. Nigel pronounced that it reached the dizzying heights of good enough, but I knew there wasn't enough material for a screenplay.

Over the course of a year, I added more material to the outline. Subplots. Details of the city and its inhabitants. Side stories and examples. Scenery descriptions. More characters to better illustrate the themes. Anything and everything I might need so that I wouldn't be coming up with ideas on the spot and getting stuck in corners.

Nigel informs me that he cannot make head or tails of this expanded outline, that he can't keep track of who all these supporting cast characters are or why they matter or how they serve the plot or what the hell is going on. And I myself an experiencing something similar -- there's too much material for the script.

As a result, things are being shortened down. A complex chain of deduction is reduced to looking up an address. An extensive car chase has been excised. A complex series of six different mysteries has been reduced to two. It's hell on the editor, but it feels like it's better to have too much than too little?

Um. Trump just made noted white nationalist Steve Bannon his chief strategist. I don't know how having no filter and a tendency to exaggerate diminishes the racist attitudes in play and in power here.

Uncle Informant, I have some very bad news for you. I am really scared of Donald Trump. I am so terrified that I had to write some script pages of Quinn Mallory telling me how to keep moving forward so that I could fall asleep at night. But Quinn is only a fictional character and he can only go so far, so I will be depending on you heavily to de-escalate the left-leaning hysteria and possibly direct me to some better news sources. I'm frightened and I don't even live in America.

"Flashpoint" was a terrible, incoherent, confusing episode and I'm not surprised that Slider_Quinn21 got lost. In terms of what subsequent episodes indicate: after Thawne killed Nora Allen and then mocked Barry that the present would be different, he sped off -- only for his speed force to deplete from his body, just as it did in the original timeline. As a result, the Season 1 - 2 timeline unfolds as we saw but with differences where events and outcomes that depended on random chance experience a second round of variability.

The reason why this does not come through properly: "Flashpoint" has Thawne taunt Barry and then speed off, leaving it completely unclear if he engages in some other villainy or if he loses his speed as he did in the original timeline due to too many time jumps. This is also problematic because the episode that showed Thawne losing his speed in the year 2000 didn't really provide a strong rationale for why his speed vanished, and if the jump to 2000 ran him nearly dry, he shouldn't have had any speed left in "Flashpoint."

I honestly can't believe "Flashpoint" aired the way it did. It should have run in a two hour timeslot. As for Thawne's appearance in LEGENDS -- I'm assuming up to this point that we're seeing the Reverse Flash *before* he killed Barry's mother and got stranded in the 21st century.

I'm not sure what's worse, the supposedly liberal people protesting with fists and fire or the rash of bigoted and racially motivated assaults from people who feel emboldened by the white supremacist who is their new president. Plenty of bad to go around.

I do wish people wouldn't boil down Hillary Clinton's failure to being a woman. The truth is that the Democratic Party sold out to corporate interests a long time ago, they just had friendlier PR that presented a public facade of concern for equality, civil liberties and acceptance whereas a man like Donald Trump doesn't feel the need to conceal his contempt for minorities and women or his profiteering at the expense of the poor. And I do wish people wouldn't see Trump's ascendance as some sort of successful backlash against the system that system remains completely in power -- just on the other side.

Really happy with SUPERGIRL's take on Alex's sexuality. I thought "Crossfire" was really fun, but a lot of production issues are still apparent, like Kara and Mon-El loudly discussing their secrets in a crowded newsroom (unless the joke is that the newsroom is so busy that they have no need to worry anyone bother to listen in). That said, pretty much every superhero show on the air is a bit detached from physical reality.

ARROW is also going very well this year. I think the problem with Seasons 3 - 4 was that there were too many fantasy elements in addition to the crime in the city stories. The earthquake machine of Season 1 was crazy but workable. The supersoldiers of Season 2 were a bit more detached from reality, yet effective. The key is that these threats exist on an extremely physical, ground-level setting.

But with Season 3, you had immortal leaders of assassin cults, two separate methods of resurrecting dead characters, bafflingly unmotivated characters (R'as is obsessed with Oliver because... ? He wants to destroy Star City because... ?) and then you have Brandon Routh playing Iron Man and flying around in a metal suit.

With Season 4, your villain has magical powers. Somewhere around there, Felicity has become a perfect fantasy woman. The fantasy elements got out of control, although I understand it's hard to tell what's too much and what's not when your lead character's secret identity doesn't wear a mask. I think this season has found the right balance: Ragman's surrounded by otherwise street-level vigilantes, Prometheus fits into ARROW's world of bows and arrows rather than THE FLASH's world of magic and mutants. Church is a thug rather than a faith leader. Felicity has been de-romanticized significantly.

FLASH has recovered nicely from "Flashpoint," but the loss of Tom Cavanaugh as an effective mentor is really unfortunate. Harrison Wells has always been the father figure of the series and it's tough to adjust to him playing the annoying cousin who tests your patience and whose eventual departure is a relief. Wells in Season 1 was like Arturo: the glue of the group. The wise mentor who was too good to be true. And the fact that it was all a lie was heartbreaking.

Wells in Season 2 was a genuine leader and father figure, but with a bitter, caustic edge that was redeemed by his talent and compassion. I would rather keep him around.

CHUCK's fourth season got extended. The original finale was Chuck proposing marriage to Sarah in the hospital. The extended episode order resulted in the writers coming up with a new 11-episode arc -- essentially a fifth season of the show, except because it served as a sequel to the first 13 episodes' storylines, it still felt like part of Season 4. So Timothy Dalton's defeat in episode 13 led to episodes 14 - 24 introducing Timothy Dalton's daughter and bringing Dalton back as an imprisoned antagonist.

I'm re-reading the President Lex Luthor storyline in SUPERMAN comics right now and I'm really heartened by how Clark Kent reacts: he politely congratulates Lex on his victory. In public, Superman maintains his composure. In private, Clark goes between deeply cynical depression and a seething rage, at times struggling to get out of bed in the morning, at others smashing his fists into the moon in frustration. Eventually, he composes both sides into a solemn dignity and a resolute defiance, knowing that respect doesn't preclude dissent and that it's simply a matter of time before a very sick-in-the-head man falls apart and leaves himself open to defeat.

I'm sorry about your back, Informant. Keep us posted.

Well. I decided to reduce the action in the way that Informant advised and got it down to 26 pages. I guess that's okay for a Bondian opening. http://freepdfhosting.com/885454a1c8.pdf

Actually, I've worked out a solution. I need to divide the script into episodes and make the episodes like separate chapters of a novel. They'll still be one script, but each segment will have a separate title card. Not a title, I want to keep the "Regenesis" banner, but I'll find a decent quote to start each portion and focus on a specific character or pairing. That way, a 46-page SLIDERS-meets the Marvel Cinematic universe episode can be followed by a lightweight Season 1-esque comedy of mistaken identities, then a David Peckinpah-style detective story, then a pacey science fiction adventure like in Season 2, and then back to the superhero material for the last installment. They'll all, individually, feel like TV episodes.

I'm hitting another weird situation -- the opening is a bit like a James Bond movie where we have an introductory action sequence. They're not supposed to be that long. But this opening action sequence is shaping up to be FORTY PAGES of script. The thing is -- there's a lot more description here than in a real screenplay. If filmed, it would only be 15 minutes. But something that takes twenty seconds to show -- like an office complex of gadgets and a quick-paced fight scene -- is taking a page to describe. This could possibly be a 250 page screenplay when it's done.

I guess this effectively destroys the (fragile) illusion that SLIDERS REBORN is a filmed revival of the series. It's a novel that happens to use the screenplay format.

I'm having a bit of trouble stringing some of my setpieces together. This is something Michael Piller wrote about in his unpublished MAKING OF STAR TREK INSURRECTION book:

There’s a new kind of action writing in Hollywood that I simply don’t know how to do. It begins -- even before a word is put down on paper -- with identifying set pieces, big self-contained action moments that are thrilling and memorable, and then finding some way to string all your set pieces into a coherent narrative.

This approach almost never results in a good movie because it abandons the fundamental demands of storytelling. Of course, I want top-notch visuals and effects, but I don’t go to the movies to see them. I go to see stories about interesting characters.

The opening of the last SLIDERS REBORN script involves Quinn taking on a small army of gunrunners followed by a car chase through the streets of San Francisco. I'm having trouble communicating the chain of logic for why Quinn feels compelled to fight these people or chase down three humvees and a stolen police car, why he doesn't just call the cops and go home or why an investigation into secret weapons caches in San Francisco suddenly becomes a rescue mission. The weird thing is that all these reasons are in the outline itself, but when laying them out in the story, it became necessary to truncate them to throwaway lines of dialogue, just enough to somewhat (or barely) justify the action sequences.

However, the action sequences were not intended as eye candy. The idea is that the fight with the gunrunners could show off how sliding technology has advanced significantly and show off some of the sliding flourishes that Quinn's now capable of -- I needed to set up and show off the sliders' superpowers. The car chase was a way of having the story lay out the surroundings of San Francisco and give a sense of what this now-interdimensional version of San Francisco is like. However, in converting the outline to script, a lot of these details are being reduced to the point of having only enough to get to the next scene and it's a struggle to make sure that the details that stay present are at least the alt-history details.

Ah, screenwriting.

Informant's character has me thinking of Saoirse Ronan or Taissa Farmiga.

**

The thing about doing a stageplay about a SLIDERS obsessive -- I wonder if my lead character would be a fan of SLIDERS if I'd go the GALAXY QUEST route and make the character a fan of JUMPERS and its lead character, Quintin McConnell. If it's SLIDERS, it ties you to the show more vividly and intimately. If it's JUMPERS, you have the option of potentially hiring someone to play Quintin and let the fan interact with his fictional hero.

The other thing I wonder about -- in order to write a stageplay with conflict and drama, I would need to vastly exaggerate my obsessiveness with SLIDERS. The truth is that I regularly blow SLIDERS off for more important things. I remember Laurie and I sitting down at a market restaurant to work on our projects. But then Laurie started talking about her dead father and my vague grunts in response only seemed to encourage her to keep sharing about him and I put the laptop away and accepted that I would not be getting any scripting done on SLIDERS REBORN because I needed to listen to her talk about her dad.

But, for entertainment purposes, I would probably rewrite that entire scene so that the lead character is so obsessed with SLIDERS that he doesn't notice his friend is trying to share something emotional and important. It would be fictionalized severely. And I would probably make the lead character a woman and ask my stage actress friend Emily to play her because my quirks have always seemed more suited to someone like Emily.