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I liked Season 8 a lot. Season 9 was a meandering mess best exemplified by "TrustNo1" where Doggett, Reyes and Scully spend the climax running around a quarry shouting for Mulder with Mulder played by a stunt double seen at a distant and urgently running away from everyone involved in the series. The myth-arc was a mistake that even Frank Spotnitz acknowledged in a recent interview where he said that, looking back, he focused too much on plot and too little on character.

It's a symptom of TXF being an early adopter of serialized TV. The first time you do anything, especially if you're the first to do it, it will probably suck.

TheM0vieblog.com has been doing some great retrospectives of the Season 10 - 11 comic books and the revival mini-series. The comics, M0vieBlog notes, initially tried to make a big show of being a canonical revival with approval from Chris Carter because the publishers understood that fans will judge what counts and what doesn't count and getting the series creator's name on the cover would make the comics count.

M0vieBlog then notes how, even before the first comic arc was completed, the show's live action revival made it clear the comics had started out canonical but weren't anymore and how the story and the writer act out this little drama within the pages itself; the Cigarette Smoking Man in the Season 10 comics is a clone with a patchwork series of memories from documents and a telepath, a stand-in for the real thing trying to justify his own existence and argue that he has meaning and will and purpose.

The Season 11 comics end on Mulder encountering a rip in spacetime caused by the alien's reality warping vessels and seeing visions of alternate realities, one of which is the TV revival. Writer Joe Harris carefully moves his own stories out of continuity while declaring that the comic books are canonical and it's the TV show that's set in a parallel reality in which the alien conspiracy was a hoax where in the main reality, it most certainly wasn't.

M0vieBlog has a really neat take on "My Struggle," first noting that it's Chris Carter tacitly acknowledging that the mythology can't make sense. Instead, the situation will be that some of it is true and some of it is not and some of it will be blatantly ignored. The blog also notes: the Revival episodes have a very different take on the aliens from the original series.

In the original series, the aliens were evil monsters, full stop. Chris Carter's view was that aliens are external representations of evil. But in the years that passed, Carter changed and "My Struggle" reflects this with true evil being represented entirely by self-serving human beings and aliens are now innocent parties.

The two views of aliens -- external evil seeking to corrupt the human race and beneficent observers who were kidnapped and killed -- are incompatible, which is why the alien conspiracy mythos is at odds with the Spartan virus mythos. The Chris Carter of 1993 is not the Chris Carter of 2016; he now sees evil as something within ourselves rather than something outside ourselves.

It's an interesting dilemma; what if, when returning to a series you started, you don't believe what you believed when you started the series?

It's something I found myself struggling with in that I am doing a pastiche of Tracy Torme and Dan Harmon for SLIDERS REBORN and the 2015 - 2016 version of SLIDERS is more cynical than the 1995 version of SLIDERS. The 1995 version of SLIDERS believes that our world has turned out great, that everything -- the American Revolution, the World Wars, the civil rights movement, the Clinton administration, Vietnam, Wall Street -- has ultimately put us in a decent place, albeit a place filled with injustices and failures and problems -- but that any divergences would shift us from a flawed but workable situation to a nightmarish world of fascist dystopian madness.

SLIDERS REBORN is fundamentally opposed to SLIDERS on that level -- SLIDERS REBORN declares that everything has turned out terribly, that our world is in shambles, that our world has been in a mess since 1995 and well before it, that our civilization is skateboarding straight to hell and that all of this is Quinn Mallory's fault in that his invention should have changed everything, but his incompetence has doomed us all. It is a serious philosophical distinction between the two. I don't think for one moment that Tracy Torme's version of REBORN would be anything like mine -- this is the Dan Harmon version of SLIDERS, really. But there is no way that Tracy, having come out of Season 3, didn't emerge embittered and cynical.

But I think that SLIDERS REBORN is still recognizable as SLIDERS because it shifts the positivity of the original SLIDERS onto the characters. Wade Welles is a guidance counsellor, Rembrandt Brown is an award winning sound engineer, Professor Arturo is a celebrated sci-fi author and Quinn Mallory is a one-man Salvation Army. Despite all the wrong turns and dead ends and abandoned plot threads and murders and mutilations and that business with the Chasm we'd all like to forget, the journey brought them all to who they are now and that makes it worthwhile. The positivity is still there, it's just not positivity about our world.

With THE X-FILES -- I think that the only way to reconcile the two opposing views would have been to present Mulder and Scully as two people living lives that are assailed by dark forces outside of them that turn out to be humans with a dark agenda as opposed to aliens with a dark agenda. Carter chose not to do this by having Mulder and Scully split up because of his obvious discomfort with romance, so "My Struggle" is an X-FILES relaunch that's truly detached from the show from which it began.

According to the girl that Martin called before Zimmerman killed him, she overheard the start of the exchange between Martin and Zimmerman. Martin noticed Zimmerman following him and Zimmerman was close enough that Martin could ask him, "What are you following me for?" at which point Zimmerman demanded, "What are you doing around here?" Which means that Zimmerman wasn't observing at a distance; he got up close, he wanted a confrontation. You make it seem like all Zimmerman did was call the police as opposed to what he did, which was call the police and then pursue Martin because Zimmerman fancied himself a police officer.

And I would not call the police because I would not find it strange for an unfamiliar black teenager to be walking through the streets, even recently burglarized streets, because being unknown to me and being black are not characteristics that threaten me. The fact that Martin was high on marijuana is also not frightening to me as being high and being a teenager aren't exactly unusual circumstances and plenty of teenagers get high without breaking and entering, nor would I be bothered to call the police just because of someone's personal lifestyle decisions. I would call the police if someone were levering front doors and windows open with a crowbar.

ME: "Hmm. The new SLIDERS DVD release would truly be complete if they would put SLIDERS REBORN on it in comic book form and hired Dennis Calero to draw it. I feel he could really sell the sequence of the breeder parasites and the dragon and the rockstar vampires descending upon the merged San Francisco that I'm currently scripting."

[NOTE: Calero drew the second half of the NARCOTICA comic.]

MATT: "Why don't YOU hire Dennis Calero to draw it?"

ME: "Because I don't want to get sued. And he doesn't want to get sued. I'd have to pay him and he'd be drawing a profit from an unlicensed project."

MATT: "You live in Canada."

ME: "I drive by the NBCUniversal Canada office every morning. And look at what happened to the Star Trek fan films. Honestly, the PDF format is best for staying prominent but without any legal entanglements. The prominence of REBORN is fundamentally absurd, of course."

MATT: "Well, a private commission? Pay him to draw the best scene from each episode. It's you creating a unique piece of art for yourself. How cool would it be to get someone to professionally draw something for you?"

ME: "To me, the *real* coolness is Tom and Cory reading out passages of my scripts in their podcast and saying stuff like, 'This is SLIDERS, this is how it's supposed to be.' The real coolness is that TV Tropes page that guy made for my fan fiction. The real coolness is you making a REBORN section on your site. Honestly, typing about it right now -- if you were here in person, I would hug you and cry for a few minutes."

MATT: "Hahaha! Well, thank you, brother. I would awkwardly push you away and hand you your teddy bear."

These discs are a chance for a home video release to finally get it right with dual layer discs to avoid overcompression, episodes in the correct order, no missing episodes and without packaging so poorly designed that the only sensible response is to return it to NBCUniversal through their front window attached to a brick.

NBCUniversal should be ashamed of the DVD release they put out -- if they can't even put the episodes in the right order, why release it at all?

There's no way the HUB could have done the HD upscale unless they were given the raw materials from Univeral to do it in the first place.

I emailed Mill Creek and asked about the video quality on the new set and they wrote back to spend three paragraphs saying NOTHING WHATSOEVER. I don't think they know what the video quality will be; maybe they don't have the original DVD release to make a comparison.

If the new release isn't compressing six hours of video onto one disc, I'll buy it. Netflix Canada doesn't have SLIDERS. Even American Netflix is missing some episodes for reasons unfathomable but are probably due to the Dr. Geiger's Combine experiment warping spacetime and corrupting reality into a twisted incarnation filled with horror, madness and loss.

I'd like the episodes in the correct order. I'd like a decent quality version of "As Time Goes By" to watch endlessly. I'll never watch anything past Season 2 except for research purposes. The lack of simulated HD isn't a huge problem.

I do think that Mill Creek could have done a blu-ray release with the techniques I've explained. However,  my PowerDVD software player can do the upscale for me.

A blu-ray release could store the video at the highest possible quality, but I imagine even if you maxed out the bit rate, the video quality would not be any better than video at the upper limit of DVD storage. Universal's masters are undoubtedly in standard definition. So long as Mill Creek doesn't overcompress the way Universal did, it should be fine.

Here's an example of how SLIDERS could be upconverted to 16:9 with a plug and play solution. This is how SLIDERS looks when I watch it on my HTPC and switch on the upconvert. The upconverted version is on the right.

The algorithm isn't just chopping the top and bottom off a 4:3 image. It's stretching the edges of the image at a moderate percentage for the left and right and an even smaller percentage at the top and bottom, filling a 16:9 space while losing some detail at the border of the image, but not remotely as much as uniform cropping and it avoids distorting the image.

You know, if you haven't read the comic, you should really shut the fuck up about it seeing as you can't possibly speak to it with any knowledge. I've read the comic, I can say with authority that it's contextual memory alteration via -- wait, what?! What? Oh.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic … s/pageno=2

Uh. Writer Nick Spencer did a new interview where he talked about how the Cosmic Cube has altered history -- as opposed to memory. Reality has been rewritten to rework Cap's backstory into someone who has been a HYDRA agent all along. It's not memory alteration or mind control. It's time travel. I guess I misread the issue or misunderstood something or missed a line of dialogue.

Well. That was embarrassing. I guess having read the comic didn't help me much, either. Sorry, Informant. What a screw up!

(The following RAGE is strictly for comedic purposes and should not be taken seriously.)

I see no lies. Nick Spencer said: "This is not a clone, not an imposter, not mind control, not someone else acting through Steve. This really is Steve Rogers, Captain America himself." http://www.ew.com/article/2016/05/25/ca … m-brevoort

And what he said is correct. it isn't mind control. It's memory alteration. Mind control would be someone giving Steve instructions as to what to say and how to act and turning him into a drone. That is not what's happened here; Steve has been given a different history even though his personality has been left intact. His mind is not being controlled -- his memories have been revised. Why is the story so focused on the fact that this isn't mind control? Because that way, it's still possible to explore the Steve Rogers character in this sitaution. That is key to this story. He's been rewritten -- and turned loose in an act of spite by the Red Skull.

And also: at no point -- ever -- did the writers or editors say that Cap was now a full out villain and had been all along. Instead, what Spencer said on Cap being evil was, "That question will be answered, at least for the most part, in the next issue. That wasn’t something that we wanted to drag out." http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 … llain.html

Editor Tom Brevoort also added, "No, Captain America is not a Nazi. I’m gonna say the same thing I’ve been saying. Captain America: Steve Rogers #2 will explain exactly why and exactly how we are where we are." http://www.newsarama.com/29507-marvel-o … eader.html

I take no pleasure in saying this, but it seems to me that the only people lying would be the ones who refer to non-existent quotes like those morons on Twitter who think that CAP #2 was pulped, rewritten, redrawn and reprinted inside a month.

At no points did Spencer and Brevoort say that it wasn't "a trick" or that it wasn't "brainwashing" -- those are your words. Don't put your words in their mouths!

OMG, what a crime against literature to decline to spill the outcome of a story in interviews and instead let it emerge in the course of the next issue!

Greg Berlanti should also be deeply ashamed for killing off Jay Garrick and not immediately revealing in interviews that Jay isn't really dead or really even Jay. Agatha Christie should be executed for not putting the answers to all her mysteries in the introduction. JK Rowling should be shunned for waiting until the seventh HARRY POTTER to lay out Professor Snape's secret when she had an obligation to divulge all her twists and turns in the press! ireactions should kill himself because Laurel being Quinn's daughter isn't revealed until SLIDERS REBORN: PART 3 and maybe if he'd put that on the title page of PART 1, jackass supreme RussianCabbie would have held off on saying Laurel should but cut from the story based on the first 50 pages!

Kyle Andrews should be banished to a desert island with nothing but J. Michael Straczynski comics to read because FREEDOM/HATE didn't contain a bullet-point list at the end to tell me where the story's going!

... I need to lie down.

(Just being spirited, not really angry at Informant -- well, no angrier than my general state of anger at the human race. Sorry.)

SHOCKING NAZI CAPTAIN AMERICA REVELATION!

CAP #2 reveals that the Red Skull used the Cosmic Cube to alter Steve Rogers' memories to make him think he's an agent of HYDRA. SHOCK! GASP! ASTONISHMENT!

(Except that this was clearly set up in #1 with the presence of the Cube and its reality and memory altering powers being established -- meaning that the majority of those who torched Marvel, the writer and the story for #1's tale obviously hadn't read it and were lashing out with zero context and no meaningful information on which to build an opinion.)

And now follow the dumbass reactions from people claiming Marvel have reversed course in response to backlash -- except that comics tend to be written and drawn at least a COUPLE MONTHS IN ADVANCE AND THIS ISSUE SHIPPED ON TIME FOR GOD'S SAKE.

SHOCK! GASP! ASTONISHMENT!

We'll have to disagree on the quality of these fan productions, but the issue wasn't that the fan stuff endangered their new property; it was the fan stuff was being used to make money with absolutely no licensing agreement whatsoever. And they have every right to take issue with 1.1 million dollars being used to make a STAR TREK fan film without authorization, the same way you probably would not tolerate strangers using your house as a brewery without your permission and compensation. We can debate whether Paramount and CBS are being extreme, but they have every right to permit some fan films or no fan films. STAR TREK is their house.

**

Hmm. One iffy thing regarding SLIDERS REBORN, now that I think on it -- I offered SLIDERS fanfic genius Nigel Mitchell money for his services on the project. Not being a history buff or a world-builder, I asked Nigel to take my one-sentence concepts and give me an alt-history as well as visual details of daily life to work into the scripts.

I wanted to pay him for each Earth, but Nigel declined and pointed me to his Amazon page, where I bought every novel he's published and will buy every novel he ever releases, partially because I want to read them and partially to pay him something.

I wonder what kind of trouble we'd have been in if I'd paid Nigel about $500 for what I imagine would have been a couple hours of writing bullet points of whatever came to mind for the four Earths. I guess I could have written it off as a one-time gift? And what about the hotel room I rented? The hotel made money off me doing SLIDERS REBORN. But I guess they made money off me wanting a room as opposed SLIDERS REBORN.

I imagine that NBCUniversal wouldn't see the point of litigating over a matter of $680, but crowdsourcing over a million dollars raises all sorts of alerts and red flags.

The STAR TREK RENEGADES fan series, in response to the TREK fanfilm guidelines, has decided to carry on with their project anyway. They're just removing all the STAR TREK elements from their content. If their material is worth doing to begin with, this isn't going to be a problem.

Looking at my own stuff -- if you took LONELYGIRL15 out of LONELYJOURNAL15 and SLIDERS out of SLIDERS REBORN, they would collapse instantly. But that's why I would never want anyone to put anything but thought and typing into either of these projects; that's why they exist as PDF documents.

My thoughts on Grizzlor's thoughts:

(a) With the exception of STAR TREK CONTINUES, all those fanfilms and fan serieses SUCKED. Terrible cinematography, embarrassingly poor acting (even from the professional actors) and ghastly writing. We had this lengthy debate on the old Bboard where you said the original series was cheesy too and I said the original TREK was melodramatic and funny and conversational and skillful whereas these fan films were just inept. So, no great loss on the most part.

(b) When you play in somebody else's sandbox without permission, that sand may be confiscated and the box dismantled at any time. Anyone who doesn't take the time to inform themselves of that potentiality shouldn't get into the sandbox. Nobody told them to invest the time and money into a project that used copyrighted material they didn't license and do not own.

(c) If they really want to tell their stories and make their shows and films in the way that they have, they could still do it. If NBCUniversal sent me a cease and desist notice on SLIDERS REBORN, I'd be back online within the hour. SLIDERS REBORN would become JUMPERS REBORN. Quinn would Quentin Michaels, Wade would be Willa Wallace, Rembrandt/Remmy would become Raphael/Raphi Baldwin and Professor Arturo would become Professor Allan and I'd just carry on as a parody.

The main issue: the Axanar funds were being used to build a for profit studio and pay the producer. This was not a zero profit project; Axel Peters was earning money for himself and paying himself from the crowdsourced funds. He forced Paramount and CBS to defend their copyright. If they let this slide, they wou'd be legally vulnerable to losing their copyrights for not defending them.

So, something ridiculous has happened.

Back in 2007 - 2009, I was really into LONELYGIRL15, a fictional young-adult series told through a teenaged girl, Bree, vlogging in her bedroom, relating her life.

Bree vlogged about her friendship with a boy named Daniel, struggles with adolescence, troubles at school, her religion (called the Hymn of One), her parents' oddly controlling and inconsistent behaviour, the strange tests her parents and the Elders of her religion put her through, the peculiar injections, the preparations for a mysterious occult ritual called the Ceremony, the murder of her father, the desperate escape that sent Daniel and Bree into homelessness before they encountered a wealthy orphan named Jonas, and their eventual realization that the Hymn of One, the Order, had was a corporate entity of unmatched wealth and power that had infiltrated every level of American society and wanted to drain Bree of all her blood for some twisted death rite.

It was a very strong series for the first two seasons and it took some big risks. The series was dependent on the original writer, Mesh Flinders, putting his personal problems into Bree, his avatar. The producer, Miles Beckett, helped Mesh turn his scripts into vlogs in bedrooms -- and later, vlogs by teen fugitives delving deeper into the concept of the Order, this mysterious and powerful cult.

This became a major problem when Mesh Flinders lost interest in the teen fugitive format and how very, very distant the show had become from slice of life stories from a teen girl in her bedroom. The show also lost the actress who played Bree and the character was killed off.

While the supporting cast was strong enough to carry the show, the remaining writers began focusing stories exclusively on the Order -- a ridiculously overpowered supervillain organization that the writers and producers didn't have the creativity or budget to render onscreen or with any consistent means or goals. In the background as a plot device to create insane situations, the Order was great. Foregrounded, it was stupid. The videos became riddled with confusing plots, massive continuity errors, anti-climactic arcs and LONELYGIRL15 became more convoluted than THE X-FILES. It was largely abandoned by its fans, unable to find continued advertising sponsorship, and it ended on a cliffhanger.

As I am wont to do, I decided to come up with a fan fiction sequel, except I used the format of LiveJournal blog entries instead of vlogs. Also, my story was not ongoing: all the entries would be completed, backdated, then released all at once -- and there would be a conclusive finale to the story. However, my writing was more along the lines of the slice of life material and I only understood the Order continuity well enough to know it couldn't be understood.

I had a method of putting the Order back in the background where it belonged and also a method to explain why this super cult with its own private army couldn't track down a bunch of teenagers who posted their location on YouTube -- but I needed someone more familiar with the intricate continuity to help me match my material to previous stories.

There was a producer on LONELYGIRL15, Jenni Powell, whom I felt would be the ideal person to help plot this project, especially since she'd helped a bunch of other fans with fanfic and done her own fanfic vlog series spoofing LG15. She was often in the LG15 chat room and I had a lot of respect for her views. She had very insightful thoughts on LG15's convoluted myth-arc and how the characters were the best aspect of the show. She understood how to present complexity in a clear, compact form. She knew how to build on top of a convoluted mythos without falling into the cracks and holes of a bad foundation. She was the best choice possible to lead LONELYGIRL15 forward (although I imagined I would do bulk of the writing and she could help me edit my plot and match the continuity).

In 2009, after the show was clearly not returning, I approached Jenni and asked for her consultation and input on my LiveJournal project to do a sequel and conclusion. Jenni replied bluntly: she didn't see any point to working on any LG15 material as the show had fallen apart and was just a miserable property best left alone, she didn't think LG15 ought to have any further time or effort or creativity and that she just didn't think it was worth the work.

Jenni went on to work on other web shows: THE GUILD, THE LIZZIE BENNET DIARIES, EMMA APPROVED, THE NEW ADVENTURES OF PETER AND WENDY as a director and executive producer. I found other collaborators. One guy helped me with my plot structure. Another lady helped me reconcile my plot to the onscreen continuity. I wrote all the LiveJournal entries with their notes in mind.

We released LONELYJOURNAL15 to the fanbase in late 2009 and got a uniformly positive response with numerous fans declaring that it was canon because it made them happy. LJ15 gave any fans who read it closure. I still get fan mail on it now and then. Jenni, despite declining involvement, was really sweet about my writing and even gave me permission to integrate her material from her previous fanfic projects in LONELYJOURNAL15.

Cut to the present: LONELYGIRL15 has been revived again as an ongoing series. The series picks up eight years after the cliffhanger ending, picking up on all the previous continuity. The actress who played the original lead character has been re-hired to reprise her role. The rights to the series were purchased by a web videocompany, Discourse Productions -- it's Jenni Powell's company. Jenni Powell is the showrunner for this revival of LONELYGIRL15.

...............................

Originally, my material was considered by fans who read it to be canonical by default in that LG15's creators had abandoned the project on a cliffhanger and for a follow-up, I was the only game in town and the response was universally positive. Now, LONELYJOURNAL15 is clearly apocryphal fan fiction. A project to be put aside in favour of the true, official, canonical LONELYGIRL15 revival -- a revival led by the very person I sought out to produce new LONELYGIRL15 material in the first place.

Well. Anyway. I just want it on record somewhere that I considered this person to be the absolute best choice to manage a new incarnation of LONELYGIRL15 long before she got the job. While I am sad to be rendered apocryphal, solemn contemplation leads me to conclude that I am happy because what I wanted has come to pass. LONELYGIRL15 has returned with Jenni writing the series.

It does speak to a certain laxness of forward motion in my own life, however, that while I went from writing fanfic for LONELYGIRL15 to writing fanfic for SLIDERS, Jenni did her own material, produced her own shows, built experience and a reputation and a network and then returned to LG15 not as a fan, but as LG15's lead creator.

Matt once remarked that he found SLIDERS REBORN both heartening and depressing in that while he understood that REBORN makes me happy, he felt I should really be writing original work. Alright. After "Regenesis," it'll be onto writing about law students and their soap opera lives and homeless teen girl detectives. You can tell I'm following market research here.

The idea of watching shows when they air as opposed to having them recorded and then played or streamed at my convenience is just... so... alien to me.

So, I think a sufficient interval has passed that I can talk about the "Revolution" script and my anxieties over it in the hopes that Informant will tell me what's what.

I feel confident that Parts 1 - 4 of SLIDERS REBORN are a good media tie-in product for the fans. I am less certain about Part 5, "Revolution," because while I put a lot of heart and thought and love into it, I'm not convinced it worked.

The main problem: Mallory is very difficult to write and this character (as opposed to the actor) doesn't belong in SLIDERS REBORN. Originally, REBORN was just going to be the original sliders. But when writing Part 2, the opportunity to use doubles of previously seen guest-stars in supporting roles brought a lot of warmth and charm to the script and this led to realizing that Maggie Beckett could be effective in Part 3, because if you need an action girl, why create a new one when one already exists? Then came the need for a lady scientist in Part 5 that was filled by Diana Davis and omitting Mallory started to seem like it was unfair to Robert Floyd.

Which is stupid. This isn't really being filmed. But it bothered me. Rob worked really hard on the Mallory character. The character was a disastrous failure. None of that is Rob's fault: he studied Jerry O'Connell's acting, he hired an acting coach to help him turn mimicry into an identity crisis, he created a note-perfect recreation of Jerry's voice that would be a performance as well as a tribute -- and when fans told lies about him demanding the end of "New Gods for Old" or blamed him for the cancellation, he bore it gracefully and he was willing to do an hour-long EP.COM interview regarding a job he held for one year over a decade and a half ago.

When Rob received strong material like stealing Maggie's toothbrush or impersonating an orderly or finding allies in rogue journalists or having heartfelt scenes with Amanda Mallory, he shined. Mallory's flaws aren't Rob's. If SLIDERS REBORN is meant to be a celebration of everything great about SLIDERS, then Rob Floyd's omission would be an unacceptable insult.

Even more insulting, however, would be to give Mallory a role that would only reiterate the problem with this character: he's only there because Quinn isn't and a SLIDERS story with Quinn has no use for Mallory whatsoever -- because then I'd be saying the same thing about Rob. And that's not true. I would have loved for Robert Floyd to have played Quinn from the Pilot to the end of the show and I think he would have been superb.

He kept the spirit of Quinn alive as best he could. He honoured a wonderful creation, playing Quinn's inner strength, scientific brilliance and the heavy burden of his knowledge. He honoured SLIDERS. So SLIDERS REBORN needed to honour him. Except REBORN established in Part 1 that all of Quinn's doubles were erased, so how could Mallory even appear?

The main ingredients for any REBORN tale featuring Mallory, I felt: first, Quinn and Mallory should share scenes together to highlight what makes them unique. Second: Mallory should save Quinn's life somehow. I decided that Mallory's main gift is that he reads people and details very well -- a character trait that was not exactly consistent in Season 5, but prominent in "A Current Affair" where he wins Matt Drudge's allegiance and "Map of the Mind" where he convinces the asylum staff that he works there -- whereas Quinn is not quite as insightful when it comes to human nature.

I imagined a situation where Quinn is trapped in a room filling with poisonous gas, dying, hallucinating from the poison -- and then hallucinating Mallory, who helps him find some tiny detail that lets him escape -- like helping Quinn realize a secondary character is, for some character-oriented reason, always carrying a matchbook and the matches can be used to ignite the gas and blast through the walls and vent the gas.

And then came the questions. Where is this room? What is this gas? Who created this gas? What's it for? Why does Quinn, an experienced slider who is as slippery as an eel, need Mallory to show him the path to survival? The room is in a house?

The gas is a drug designed by a depressive who is dying of a terminal illness and seeking relief. Quinn is depressed over the multiverse being damaged and something this character said to him that made him lose all hope for the future. But what could a guest-character possibly say to instantly crush Quinn's spirit and why would this guest-character have this peculiar gas?

Matt wondered: why would Quinn hallucinate Mallory? Wouldn't he hallucinate Colin? I decided to highlight how Mallory literally knows Quinn inside out -- and the plot came together (as much as it would, anyway) when I remembered "Obsession" and how the return of a psychic from that episode would justify all the absurd plot devices needed to get Mallory and Quinn in the same room together with the gas being the hallucinogen from "The Dream Masters" and combining that with the VR machine of "Virtual Slide" and the cryogenics of "O Brother" and" The Chasm" could justify the resulting apparatus: an afterlife machine that creates ideal dream-state fantasies for the dying.

At the scripting stage, depending on plot devices from previous episodes of SLIDERS to justify "Revolution"'s oddities only seemed to make them odder. Seeing no way to back out, I turned into the swerve by having Mallory bring about Quinn's turnaround through flashbacks to previous episodes. At various points in the script, I found myself unable to keep the surreal tone of the script intact without making it confusing and I decided that confusion wasn't worth it.

I sent the script to Robert Floyd. I didn't think he would actually read it -- but I wanted him to have it as a keepsake -- something to print and keep on a shelf. And I wanted him to have his face at the top of the SLIDERS REBORN page for a few months. To recognize his contributions to the series, to the fans, to Quinn Mallory and to make it clear that he mattered and he counted and he was part of the SLIDERS family. This is fantasy franchise management at its most delusional, I'm sure.

He told me how touched he was at this tribute. I haven't heard from him about it since -- I assume, because this script was an incomprehensible monstrosity that only nerds can understand.

Ultimately, I did something that writers should not do -- I forced REBORN to use plot elements that don't function naturally in the series so that I could include a character who doesn't have an organic function in REBORN -- because I liked the actor who played him and I had to do this for him.

I know that it was just a job to him. One he held for a year over a decade ago. A job he has surpassed and left behind with many achievements since then. But nobody expected him to bring the level of performance that he did to Season 5 -- he could have phoned it in, but he was a professional who did a professional's job -- a detailed, skillful, attentive, wonderful job. People who go the extra mile deserve to be recognized.

But maybe they deserve a better script than I could offer. I don't know. I'm too close to this to tell if it's good, bad or just mediocre at this point. I did what I had to do. Maybe the best thing to do is to make sure the sixth and final script the best it can be.

This is yet another exercise in taking fan fiction way too seriously, I'm sure. I don't know what to think anymore. Informant, you tell me what to think.

So, on the subject of how big changes to iconic characters always get rolled back --

There are two weird exceptions: Dick Grayson and Superman. Having gone on a long explanation of why replacing cultural icons never works (movies and TV will use the most popular default) -- the world at large knows Dick Grayson to be Robin, yet he's been Nightwing for decades and we've cycled through Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne.

Why is that? I suspect that, very simply, BATMAN comics have generally sold really well. With comics like GREEN LANTERN, THE FLASH and SPIDER-MAN, sales initially jumped when Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, Oliver Queen and Peter Parker were replaced, but sales eventually hit a catastrophically low point where drastic action was needed and the course of action chosen was to hit the reset button HARD.

I guess BATMAN comics have never been in that sort of sales crisis. Even people who don't like superhero comics tend to find something in BATMAN to enjoy.

Kyle Rayner and Wally West actually sold quite well, Kyle for a decade and Wally for two -- but they were hit by the gradual softening of the comics market over time and the need to make an event of Hal and Barry return and give sales a jolt. I don't remember where Oliver Queen's sales were when he was killed off and replaced with Connor Hawke, but anecdotally, GREEN ARROW was barely on anyone's radar until Kevin Smith resurrected Oliver and turned GREEN ARROW into a big hit again. (Take the last one with a grain of salt.)

For Batman, there's never been a desperate need to go back to basics because none of the changes to Batman's mythos prevented writers from having Batman solve murders in Gotham City. Also, any writers who wanted to write Bruce and Dick stories could do so because he was still around.

It's weird because Dick Grayson himself is not the most interesting character, and I say that as someone who reads NIGHTWING religiously. Dick's been written by brilliant writers and drawn by superb artists who created hyperkinetic experiences of John Woo-esque ballet using Dick's acrobatic skills to showcase his circus background.

He's been put in interesting situations like when he became Batman and had to mentor a homicidal 10-year-old as the new Robin and found himself struggling to impersonate his mentor. But the character is so well-adjusted, so stable, so confident that he needs to be written by a writer with a vivid and distinct style to make up for Dick's lack of vivid distinctiveness.

With Superman -- I have no idea why the rollback was rolled back where the late-thirties, married Superman, post-reboot, become a mid-twenties bachelor.

ACTION COMICS retells the origin of Superman in 18 issues -- but with a ridiculous EIGHT different artists, all with completely opposing styles within the same individual issues -- so the art shifts from loose cartoonism to crisp photo-realism to motion-oriented exaggeration and back and forth and back and forth, often within the same scenes.

There's a decent script underneath the visual confusion of an urban vigilante Superman and a slum-dwelling Clark Kent growing in power and responsibility, but it's unreadable.

SUPERMAN, set five years after the origin story, has five different writers over the course of its first 31 issues and is a mess of directions that start and then abruptly disappear in the confusion of a rotating door of writers each of whom start stories they can't seem to finish. Clark becomes disenchanted with journalism, quits the Daily Planet, becomes a blogger -- but that plot gets sidetracked with alien invasions and crossovers with SUPERGIRL and SUPERBOY.

The crossovers themselves are halfway intriguing -- a Kryptonian seeks to destroy the Earth to create fuel for a time machine to undo the destruction of Krypton. Superman is infected by a virus that transforms him into the Doomsday monster. But with five or six writers writing each crossover, the stories become an exercise in each writer writing some variant on almost indistinguishible action sequences over and over again until it's around 25 - 30 issues of motionless stalling.

It's quite clear that SUPERMAN editorial could not get their act together: hiring creators to make bold choices, second-guessing those choices, creators quitting, eventually resorting to clumsy crossovers to boost sales. There is no sense of what Superman represents or any noteworthy style, voice, perspective, insight or deeper meaning -- any writer who brought any to the table got frustrated and took it away with them.

The best that can be said of the later crossovers is that the SUPERMAN editorial office worked out how to get multi-artist books to look good. They hired artists within the same range -- mostly loose-lined, motion-oriented exaggeration -- and made sure that the colourists could keep the pages consistent enough that it wasn't jarring. Why this skillful planning was missing from ACTION COMICS is beyond me.

That said, JUSTICE LEAGUE, after an incoherent opening arc, seemed to find its feet with the distinct personalities of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Aquaman, the Flash and Cyborg bouncing off each other. Superman was a strong presence and his romance with Wonder Woman -- a sheltered farmboy falling for an Amazonian goddess -- was rather sweet.

JUSTICE LEAGUE also had a delightful and still ongoing arc where Luthor decides that the best way to win the acclaim and fame and wealth and regard and power he wants is to renounce Evil, become a superhero and join the League.

The SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN title was also excellent, featuring strong writing that explored a very complex relationship of two people who will always feel like outsiders. There was the nine-issue SUPERMAN UNCHAINED where Superman was forced to struggle with his unwillingness to interfere in global conflicts outside of relief work.

It was baffling how the people writing the outlier SUPERMAN titles without full control over the character were the ones doing their best work while the core SUPERMAN office seemed incapable of releasing a single coherent storyline without an exasperated writer quitting without finishing.

Outside of the Superman/Wonder Woman romance, the SUPERMAN office was unwilling to take any chances in committing to any creative vision whatsoever.

And then suddenly it was. Writer Greg Pak came aboard ACTION COMICS and plunged Superman into fantasy sci-fi with Superman discovering an underground population of monsters, creating civil rights allegories while keeping the book full of absurd visuals and showcasing Superman's empathy for all. DC seemed to step back and let a great team do great stories.

Then there was Geoff Johns taking over SUPERMAN for a brief arc of widescreen action matched with Superman battling an alien invasion that sought to use Superman's public persona against him. This led into Superman developing a new superpower: emitting a burst of solar energy that was highly destructive and would leave him powerless for 24 hours.

Johns was succeeded by new writer Gene Luen Yang who began having Superman deal with the delight and fragility of being human (got drunk for the first time) and the psychological mayhem of going back and forth between godlike powers and being normal. With SUPERMAN in excellent state, ACTION COMICS doing well and SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN a monthly delight, one wondered what had taken so long and why the writers could suddenly take chances.

The next storyline was TRUTH -- a strange story in that it was told out of order. But looking at it chronologically, it's an amazing storyline: Superman going from powered up to only human means he gets injured more often and while he heals, he begins to get sloppy in concealing his secret identity.

In BEFORE TRUTH, a villain finds out he's Clark Kent and begins blackmailing Superman into giving them bursts of his charged solar energy -- and Lois, having found out the secret as well, decides to put a stop  to it by revealing Clark's secret to the world.

Villains start attacking Superman's friends. Clark Kent is wanted by the police, the Daily Planet wants to sue him for fraud, and Perry White feels betrayed by Superman masquerading as a normal person and knocks the glasses off his face.

And problematically, Clark discovers that the villains draining him via his solar flare power have somehow damaged his ability to store solar energy: his strength is reduced to lifting a truck; he can no longer fly; his supersenses are diminished and he's down to a few thousand in cash.

In SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN, Clark discovers that the power imbalance between himself and Wonder Woman has left him feeling crippled and inadequate. Watching her fly off to cosmic threats is heartrending. Worse, she interferes when Clark attempts to pilot a shuttle into the sun in a failed attempt to repower himself and steps into Clark's dealings with the CIA and the DHS when Clark asked her to stay out of it. Feeling betrayed by both Lois and Wonder Woman, Clark severs ties with both of them and sets off on his motorcycle.

Returning to Metropolis, Clark finds that his former neighbours declared his district to be Superman's town and began public protests demanding Superman be acquitted of all charges, resulting in brutal police officers storming on the protests and a weakened Superman chaining himself up with his neighbours.

This whole thing is a terrific storyline. Superman loses all the things that make him Superman -- and then keeps going anyway. He gives himself a buzz-cut, buys a Superman T-shirt and a motorcycle and carries on trying to do his job -- defending the city, fighting alien invaders, tracking down who has stolen his powers, teaming up with the JLA, battling monsters -- all the while getting beaten to a bloody pulp and dragging himself back to his feet.

At one point, in a reference to George Reeves' career, Clark spends his last $20 on tacos and is reduced to fighting in boxing matches for money. At first ashamed and humiliated, Clark begins to enjoy the show and the friendships he develops with other boxers.

Throughout this arc, Superman is homeless, depowered, weak, outmatched -- but he doesn't stop trying to be Superman, partially out of ego, partially due to his inability to stop getting involved in any trouble he comes across whether it's criminal, supernatural or paranormal even when he is completely out of his league.

At times, he struggles to keep himself on the level of a fireman and paramedic while the Justice League is handling the big threats. It's a beautiful examination of what it means to be Superman -- and you wonder how DC can go to these lengths with this character, taking big chances where before, they seemed incapable of even small chances.

Even more curiously, a mini-series, SUPERMAN: LOIS & CLARK, reveals that the Superman we followed from 1985 - 2011 who married Lois -- is not the Superman whom we've been reading about since 2011. The assumption was that Clark was de-aged and his life altered by the Flashpoint reboot into the NEW 52 version -- except it turns out the 1985 - 2011 Superman has been living in the NEW 52 universe all along -- living with Lois Lane under the false identity of the Whites and raising their 10-year-old, Jon.

Furthermore, it's revealed that the 1985 Superman has been secretly interfering in all major NEW 52 events, but always hiding, always letting the Superman of this universe live his life.

And then comes THE FINAL DAYS OF SUPERMAN where Clark (NEW 52 version) uses Kryptonite to burn away the damaged cells preventing him from recharging his powers, learns that Vandal Savage is behind his depowering -- and that it's too late. The damage to his cells is irreversible; while his powers return, his body is failing. Clark is dying. Worse, the solar energy released by his body has come under the control of a madman who believes himself Superman. In a final battle, Clark just barely manages to stop the false Superman with the help of the 1985 Superman -- who brings Clark's dying body back to the JLA just in time for Wonder Woman to tell her lover good-bye.

So why did DC take such crazy chances with the NEW 52 Superman all of a sudden? Because they were going to kill him.

TRUTH is a magnificent storyline. Beautifully illustrated. Splendidly coordinated -- except for the fact that it was inexplicably released out of order. First, we get the comics with Superman depowered (why?) with his identity public (because?) and then after that, the storyline explaining how this came to pass was released. Utterly baffling. I stayed far, far away from TRUTH until it was all done and I could read it in order.

It was great. Brilliantly edited: one writer handled Superman being exposed; one writer handled a depowered Clark struggling with Wonder Woman; one writer handled Clark struggling to earn money and carry on being Superman even when diminished. And the finale -- he dies saving lives. Beautiful.

But I wondered: what now?

ACTION COMICS #952 has Luthor publicly mourning Superman's death and declaring that he will be the new Superman -- only to be confronted by the 1985 Superman flying in to reclaim his name and shield. Superman is dead. Superman has returned.

... I don't even know what to make of that last one, but I will say that the SUPERMAN titles really found their feet after two years of screwing around. It's kind of horrifying to me, however, that DC had to be willing to kill this incarnation of SUPERMAN before they could bring themselves to tell worthwhile stories with him.

I cannot fathom why they went to the trouble to make Clark in his mid-20s instead of his mid-30s only to go and bring the mid-30s version back and have him as a father. But still. This was an awkward run that suddenly became a brilliant run and leaves me eager to see what's next.

We could probably just read the transcripts of story conferences we've had out loud -- like where you say that SLIDERS REBORN is not canon, cannot possibly be canon, will never be canon and that Wade is dead god damn it and I say that technically every fanfic is canon, all co-existing on the same multidimensional axis in some form and "Requiem" point-blank establishes that Wade is alive.

For me, the character of Batman is fundamentally optimistic, declaring that our traumas and tragedies will not overwhelm and destroy us but in fact inspire us to do good. In contrast, Frank Miller subsumed Batman into his own miserably self-loathing personality, using Batman to personify Miller's own mindset -- Miller's fetishism for prostitutes, Miller's obsession with violence, Miller's addictions.

The real Batman would not become a bitter old drunk who gets off on violence and dominating others in some pointless fight. The real Batman would accept that he had gotten old and find a successor, a new generation of heroes to inspire and tutor with his knowledge, experience and wisdom. I don't dispute that Miller is a talented visual storyteller, but he doesn't tell Batman stories, he tells Frank Miller stories and the world at large doesn't really know the difference. Sadly.

I think it is CRAZY premature to start saying that anyone other than Calista Flockhart is going to be on the show less. There have been no announcements whatsoever for the rest and three of these new hires are recurring, not regular. I'm not saying it won't happen because we don't know, but talking about it like it's a certainty as opposed to a theory is too far. I know Informant WANTS to see less of Chyler Leigh, but that's a different discussion. ;-)

I really can't see Tom playing the same Superman he did on SMALLVILLE. If he played Clark on Superman, I think it'd be a bit like how THE FLASH portrays an older Barry Allen (Henry) looking like the same actor who played Barry in the 1990s or how the SUPERMAN comics use Christopher Reeve's likeness now and then. I wouldn't mix the aesthetics of using Tom with the continuity of Tom's previous SUPERMAN series.

Despite being someone who obsessed over finding a solid explanation for why Jerry O'Connell and Robert Floyd both play Quinn Mallory without looking the same -- I just wouldn't worry about this. At all.

I'd love to see Tom Welling play Superman on SUPERGIRL not in a continuity-oriented sense -- just that I think the actor does a good job of being Superman/Clark Kent (as opposed to acting) and I think he'd do an amazing job. I'd be less in favour of Brandon Routh or Henry Cavill largely because I feel those are two actors who need the special effects -- the hairstyling, the rigs, the lighting, the costume -- to be Superman. In contrast, Tom comes off as Superman just from his affable, earnest, compassionate screen presence matched with his intensely commanding physical persona.

If they can't get Tom Welling, I would like them to hire Gregory Smith who is already working on ARROW as a director. He wouldn't be the traditional image of Superman as a muscled, six foot tall figure, however -- Smith is a toothpick sort of fellow, but Superman's strength doesn't come from his muscles anyway and he could capture Superman's earnest, heartfelt sincerity and love for all.

... so, this was meant as a tribute to the actor who played Mallory -- except I doubt he'd be able to appreciate it because the story makes absolutely no sense unless you remember the Season 2 episode, "Obsession."

Well. It's called fan fiction for a reason!!!

I barely remember it. I remember that I didn't hate it, that it wasn't a disaster, but that still left it quite a distance from being good.

I guess, to me, Apocalypse seemed like someone who would be perfectly happy ruling over corpses and rubble. It struck me as a failing of the villain rather than the plot, although I suppose it could just be the latter. While I might theorize that Apocalypse planned on using Rogue, Multiple Man and Wolverine to find and heal all the injured mutants, that's not in the film.

Sebastian Shaw's plan for nuclear war in FIRST CLASS seems to have the same problem.

**

I wonder what can be done with you're a director of a film budgeted at several hundred million and you're burnt out. I wonder if Singer could have asked someone like Roland Emmerich, a veteran of mass destruction films, to work with him as a co-director to devise the big action sequences while Singer focused on the detailed characterization he's so good at. Finding a collaborator when you're tapped out isn't a bad idea.

Another response is to demote yourself, which Allison Mack did for Season 10 of SMALLVILLE where she was so exhausted from playing Chloe that she wanted to back off before her lack of interest in the role became apparent onscreen (at least that's my read on her from a podcast interview where she talked about having a midlife crisis during SMALLVILLE) -- and doing six episodes instead of 22 meant she could fake it without phoning it in.

I don't know if Singer is the sort to do that. Judging from FIRST CLASS and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST, Singer either takes full control of a project or benches himself. FIRST CLASS was more a reboot of X-MEN than a prequel. Singer was disinclined to interfere and just offered thoughts on how to make the mutant powers awe inspiring and exciting. DAYS OF FUTURE PAST was a FIRST CLASS PART II until Vaughn quit and Singer took over and decided to make it X-MEN: THE LAST STAND: PART II; he wasn't going to facilitate Vaughn's vision.

A third route is to accept that you are tired and just hack out the material, knowing that due to rushing, it will lack detail, subtext, purpose and clarity -- and then go back later and put that stuff in afterwards. Probably not an option for a film director.

Having rewatched X-MEN and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST -- I think the problem is that Bryan Singer is just burnt out on X-MEN but perhaps didn't realize it until APOCALYPSE was underway and it was too late to quit.

DAYS OF FUTURE PAST comes off as Singer's final statement on the series, specifically in the scene where Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy meet. The Professor tells Charles that strength comes not from refusing to feel pain but being able to bear both your own and the pain of others and that it will make Charles stronger than ever.

Then there's the blatant metatextual moments where young Charles reads Wolverine's mind, sees flashes of THE LAST STAND and ORIGINS and starts screaming, "I don't want your suffering! I don't want your future!" with compassion and empathy proving to be powerful enough to change that future to Jean Grey and Scott Summers alive and well in a future where the X-Men and their students thrive in a world without Sentinels.

And APOCALYPSE ultimately feels like it's trying to say what DAYS OF FUTURE PAST says with Xavier declaring: "Those of you are strong -- protect those who are not" -- except Singer seems to have used up all the different variations with which he used physical action, mutant superpowers and vivid fight scenes to express those values and that mindset -- or he somehow lost his sense of how to fine-tune the action to reflect these views. It feels like half the film is action and it's largely detached from characterization.

But I think, in addition to being burnt out and having already said everything he had to say about and with X-MEN, Singer also wanted to change his style for APOCALYPSE.

Having done X-MEN, X2 and DOFP as the more intimate action thrillers, he declared in Variety that for APOCALYPSE, he wanted to do a "mass destruction" superhero film that X-MEN movies had never done before. I think he wanted to do a TRANSFORMERS style X-MEN film with his skill and characters -- except this style is simply not suited to Singer's strengths as a director. He was tired out on X-MEN, he tried to reinvigorate himself with a new approach, but he's deeply unsuited to it.

Maybe he should have quit while he was ahead. It's really sad to me, because my fondness for Bryan Singer's work on THE WOLVERINE's tag scene and DAYS OF FUTURE PAST really fuelled SLIDERS REBORN. I'm currently finishing up a script featuring Quinn and Mallory and it's basically inspired by the Charles/Professor scene of DOFP. Singer's been an inspiration.

Watching the first X-MEN movie, I'm reminded of the complaints about Bryan Singer clearly not liking the fantasy elements of X-MEN comics, eschewing the yellow spandex, the sci-fi fantasy world building, the hyperstylized action spectacle. It was incredibly ignorant; the costumes needed texture and weight to work in live action and yellow was a flickery, ugly colour on film. The grounded tone of the film made the X-Men feel like they existed in our world as opposed to a superhero universe. The combat had a sense of brutal intimacy and were expressions of the characters. The first X-MEN film also didn't have the money to do widescreen fantasy action; it was made like it was a low-budget TV drama that required imagination and creativity to work past any shortages of resources.

Looking at X-MEN APOCALYPSE, most of what made the first X-MEN special is absent. The budget has rocketed to the point where Cairo can be reduced to rubble and the X-Men battle in a devastated cityscape and the costumes can look comic book crazy now without looking like cheap Halloween costumes -- and the result is that APOCALYPSE, despite some good location shooting and Singer showing normal people react, seems to take place in an exaggerated superhero universe. The limitations that made the first X-MEN film oddly plausible in its absurdities are gone.

I still enjoyed APOCALYPSE plenty, of course, but I would have preferred that Bryan Singer stick to what he's good at -- intimate character pieces. He's not really a crazy action director.