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QuinnSlidr wrote:

The problem is that now CNN has a right wing bigot at the helm of its news station and that drives the narrative. So we have Twitter with a right wing bigot billionaire who owns and incompetently runs it, CNN with a right winger in charge, leaving only MSNBC and smaller random local affiliate news as the real news station of choice that spread actual fact. So the facts get largely lost in the overall narrative web of lies.

We need another competing media ecosystem that tells the truth, the entire truth, and nothing but the truth, rather than the manufactured spin on it that the rethuglicans push from their hilltops.

To be fair, MSNBC is slanted to the left.  Not as bad as Fox but it also runs news that appeals to those on the left.  There's more complete charts than this, but this is a good one: https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

I say this as someone with a journalism degree that watched a lot of this stuff happen in real time.

As the chart shows, it isn't about accuracy.  It's about slant.  Slant can obviously be editorial, but it can also be selection of stories.  If an illegal immigrant were to commit a mass shooting with a gun obtained legally, Fox news and MSNBC would tell the story differently.  Fox News would report that he was an illegal immigrant with a violent past that was allowed into the country.  MSNBC would talk about how stricter gun laws would have prevented the man from getting the gun in the first place.  Both might be accurate, but the choice of which story to tell is the slant.

There are down-the-middle news outlets, but a lot of people (myself included) like reading/watching news that appeals to them.  I find myself reading stories from questionable sources because they imply all the bad things that are about to happen to Trump in his legal troubles.  I usually have to remind myself what source I'm reading.

To me, it's like watching sports.  I don't like listening to national sports media because there isn't enough focus on the teams that I like.  Local sports radio is slanted more towards the teams I watch, but the personalities on those stations are also fans of the team.  So there's a built-in bias both from them and from me.

You can also have an NFL game broadcast where both teams' fans will complain afterward that the announcers were obviously rooting for the other team.  Both sides heard the exact same thing, but they each interpreted it differently because of their inherent biases.  I think this happens with political coverage too - something that might actually be down-the-middle might seem right-wing focused to me because my own biases lean to the left.  Down the middle to me is slightly left. 

Not criticizing.  Just adding to the discourse.

The Benevolence of Ziggy

I liked how, despite my catastrophizing about Ziggy having become Evil, the closing episodes of Season 1 reveal that Ziggy's supposed treachery was inadvertent. Ziggy is a computer documenting Ben's leaps and Ziggy's records were being reviewed by Leaper X's handlers in the future. I don't know if that connects to Ziggy's malfunctions throughout Season 1 of QL2.0. It's possible that Ziggy's stalls were to render some of their data unusable for the Leaper X team to give Ben an edge; it's possible Ziggy's difficulties were due to glitches in the rushed upload of new code that Ben installed before his hasty leap.

It was a good finale and a good lead into Season 2. I liked how Season 1 feels complete, and Season 2 can be a new chapter of the same great formula.

Ian as Al 2.0

I'm concerned that Ian won't be Ben's hologram very often. While I haven't seen much of QL1.0, I listened to all of the Rewatch Podcast covering it and I can see why Temporal Flux prefers Ian to Addison. As a pair, Ben and Ian replicate the original tone of the signature QL1.0 chemistry which had an unassuming and wholesome character in Sam and an irreverent, hedonistic, bizarre, peculiar, fundamentally decent and loving human being in Al.

Ben and Ian feel like a second generation of the original double act: Ben is a mild-mannered scientist who can think on his feet; Ian is a flamboyantly clad figure of unusual life experience and their sardonic wit and loud fashion sense mask a somewhat shaky sense of self-esteem. Ian is both familiar to Al's fans but also an inversion because Al was supremely confident but bolstering heartbreak over his wife having given him up for dead when Al was thought lost to war.

I don't know how much Ian will be Ben's hologram. From what I can tell, QL2.0 brought in other holograms because Caitlin Bassett was, like Addison, experiencing exhaustion. Just as SLIDERS had to let Quinn Mallory hide from a dinosaur or be in a coma from time to time, QL2.0 had to bring in Ian so that Addison's actress could get some sleep. The Ben/Ian teamup seems to be more of a production strategy than a storytelling choice. I hope that could change.

Mirror Image and Mirror's Edge

Regarding the original QUANTUM LEAP: if QuinnSlidr and Tom of Rewatch Podcast really want me to see it, I will of course order the blu-ray. However, I have a request for QuinnSlidr.

The first time I ever heard of QUANTUM LEAP was through Temporal Flux back on the old Sci-Fi Bboard. I suppose it makes sense as QL was TF's show before SLIDERS. Temporal Flux posted about how the "Mirror Image" finale of QUANTUM LEAP had seen a mixed reception among fans. However, there was some news: the QUANTUM LEAP novels published after the show's cancellation (published at a rate of 2 - 4) a year were coming to an end, but their 17th and final original installment would come in February 2000 with a novel called "Mirror's Edge":

Mirror's Edge, by Carol Davis with Esther D. Reese
The last leap... ?

It's 1999 -- five years after the Leap that started it all. It's 1999 -- for Sam Beckett who has leaped into Joe Powell, one of the richest men in America, a potential presidential candidate, and a man who is used to getting his way.

It's 1999 for Al Calavicci, for Donna Alessi-Beckett, for all the people at Project Quantum Leap who know that Sam is in their present, home but yet not home. But the holes in Sam's Swiss cheese memory are starting to fill, the man in the Waiting Room is strangely, disturbingly calm, and Ziggy is dispensing information that can hardly be believed. Something is about to happen. Something that will change Sam's life and the lives of those who love him—forever.

"Mirror's Edge": the conclusion to the thrilling adventures based on the hit TV series.

The novel hit the shops shortly after SLIDERS had aired its series non-finale. Some Slideheads who were also Leapers thought "Mirror's Edge" might take the sting off with a post-"Mirror Image" story.

In the many, many, many years since then, I have always remembered this posting about a media tie-in novel that I never read regarding a TV show that I never watched.

The reason I've always remembered it: "Mirror's Edge" was the first time I had ever seen an unresolved live action story being addressed in another format. That fascinated me, and I later discovered STAR TREK novels that resurrected Captain Kirk, DOCTOR WHO novels that resumed the TV show storyline during the DW hiatus from 1987 to 2005, and wrote my own tie-in stories for SLIDERS. "Mirror's Edge" remains a beacon of media tie-ins in my personal, anecdotal experience.

However, I later did learn: some QL fans expressed frustration with "Mirror's Edge" for what they called false advertising. Despite being billed as a "conclusion", that turned out to just be referring to how this 17th book was to be the last. "Mirror's Edge", like every QUANTUM LEAP novel before it, takes place before the series finale of QL1.0. It is not a sequel to "Mirror Image".

However. While "Mirror's Edge" is set before "Mirror Image"; it is set at the very edge of "Mirror Image"; it is in fact a prequel seeking to offer context to the series finale that is either new or retconned.

Some fans were furious with the publisher and the authors. Primary author Carol Davis spoke with fans on fan forums and explained: due to diminished sales, the publisher had elected to end the QL book series and commissioned a final story. However, the licensing agreement with Universal had a stipulation: the publishers were not allowed to produce any novels set after the QL series finale. The studio didn't want a novel to potentially step on any territory to be left open for a potential TV movie or series revival.

Davis and the publisher were caught between the need to produce a concluding novel and the studio declaring that Davis' typewriter wasn't to produce a single page set after "Mirror Image". Davis came up with a solution. Her solution is either tactical brilliance that would make a lawyer weep with joy or a weak gesture that is grossly inadequate.

I've always wondered what a QL fan unhappy with "Mirror Image" would think of "Mirror's Edge". would think of it if they read the book. "Mirror's Edge" is out of print, but here is a PDF and an ePub from Archive.org:

PDF: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zTRVtW … sp=sharing
EPUB: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t32dIK … sp=sharing

Will you read it and tell me what you think of it?

I would have asked Tom of Rewatch Podcast, but Tom actually likes the finale story that is "Mirror Image". "I like it, it made me feel good with the series ending where it did," he told me. "I know a lot of people don't like it, but I do. I will die on that hill!" I didn't think him the right person to read "Mirror's Edge" and tell me if it resolves his dis-satisfactions with "Mirror Image" because he wasn't dis-satisfied.

I feel so crushed, heartbroken, grief-stricken and betrayed by recent events. I honestly do not know how to process that Ziggy has turned against us and is no longer a friend.

Yes, I have been super-behind on QUANTUM LEAP, but I finally caught up with the public defender episode and the mental asylum episode. Whoa. I don't even know the original QL that well and I was deeply shaken to learn that Ziggy is the traitor on Project Quantum Leap.

Has this always been the case? Has Ziggy always been against Sam and now Ben? Will this throw our entire understanding of Ziggy and The Project into a state of upheaval? Has Ziggy's treachery been hiding in plain sight all along every time my mother's Google Nest Hub froze up, every time her smartlights didn't come on, every time Google Assistant sent me down a dead end in Google Maps? Every time Bing AI gave me incomprehensible explanations of inverse telecine or anything else pneumatic talks about?

Is Ziggy behind all these DeepFake phone calls that have been scamming people out of thousands of dollars by impersonating loved ones in need of emergency funds? Did Ziggy come up with the moral abomination that is DeepFake porn?

Was Ziggy behind the creation of the death robots of "State of the ART"? Was Ziggy steering the automatic little toy cars with laser cannons in "Please Press One"? Is Ziggy preventing me from mounting a solid AI upscale of Season 1 of SLIDERS? Did Ziggy get SLIDERS cancelled?

It's time Ziggy answered for all of the above.

I don't believe that the events of Season 2 are an alternate timeline. Picard recalls that his ancestors were mystified by the strange damage to Chateau Picard; the damage is caused by Picard and his friends in a firefight with the Borg. Guinan tells Picard she always remembered meeting him in 2024 (just as she remembered meeting him during that run in with Mark Twain) but withheld it until now. The time travel events were always a part of the original timeline.. although I admit, Season 2 of PICARD is very narratively shaky.

In the Season 2 finale, the Cooperative asks to be granted provisional entry into the Federation. Therefore, the Cooperative, in the context of the Season 2 finale, is representing itself as all Borg. Except... given that history hasn't been altered, doesn't that mean that the Cooperative must exist alongside the Collective Borg that's out there invading and assimilating? Wouldn't the Collective still be out there? How can the Cooperative also engage in diplomatic relations on behalf of the Collective?

But the story presents itself as the start of peace between the Federation and the Borg, so the implication would be that Cooperative has replaced the Collective at this point in time; that in the decades between FIRST CONTACT and PICARD, the Collective has either died out or given way to becoming the Cooperative.

Season 3 discards this implication and sticks flatly to what was onscreen: the only Borg who are our friends are the individual Cooperative Borg we saw onscreen in Season 2. Those are the only ones to be trusted; all other Borg are our enemies. It's kind of rude, but given how muddled and confused Season 2 was, I can't blame the Season 3 writers for being dismissive of it.

Awhile ago, QuinnSlidr posted:

Dr. Soong on Star Trek...Dr. Seong on Quantum Leap...they just don't even try to be creative anymore do they? I can imagine the writer's meeting: "Just replace one o with an 'e'. Nobody will know the difference."

I accused QuinnSlidr of racism for claiming that it was stealing from Gene Roddenberry to have South Korean actors (like Raymond Lee) playing South Korean characters (like Ben) with South Korean names (like Seong). QuinnSlidr apologized and said it was a mistake; he hadn't been aware of Seong being a South Korean surname.

Since this same person started a thread talking about how much he loved EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, a film about parallel universes headlined by Asian actors, we have to conclude that QuinnSlidr is not racist.

On a side note, NBCUniversal executives clearly read this thread and asked the QL2.0 producers to change Ben's name from "Seong" to "Song".

Still. What would Marc Scott Zicree have said to QuinnSlidr? How would he reboot my remarks and do better?

The name "Seong" actually appears in Korean history as early as 1418. The role of Ben Seong is played by South Korean actor Raymond Lee, so this is an Asian name for an Asian character played by an Asian actor.

Noonian Soong's great. One most memorable characters ever created, along with Khan Noonian Singh, another unforgettable creation from Gene Roddenberry. Both were named after a friend Roddenberry made during World War II, a (supposedly) Chinese pilot (supposedly) named Kim Noonien Wang (supposedly as no record of any pilot by anything resembling that name has ever been located).

The name Khan Noonien Singh for the 1967-debuting character is a mix of Muslim (Khan) and Sikh (Singh) names. The name Soong for Data's creator, who first appeared in 1988, is an unusual English transliteration of the Chinese name Sung.

I'm reasonably sure that a name that first appears in 15th century South Korean history isn't stolen from Gene Roddenberry. I'm sure that there's no slight against Roddenberry when Asian characters played by Asian actors have Asian names.

I also don't think Roddenberry stole his names either; he was honoring a friend he missed and wanted to see again (and whose name he may have had some trouble remembering).

We should remember: when something seems reminiscent of STAR TREK, it's not necessarily ripping off STAR TREK as much as it's drawing from the same cultures and influences that Gene Roddenberry drew upon as well.

@quinnslider  it seems like artemis, artemis dehalo (is that the same thing?) and gaia may be the top algorithms.... ib used a lot of artemsis bouncing between different quality settings depending on the season, i believe.  his process is written up on page 1 of this thread....

(also gaia is slower but you may have enough processing power to use it -- it may be more ideal for later seasons).

On a general note, picking up on some of what ib was saying on limitations with topaz, I was thinking the next great future technology might not focus on existing film grain, but rather re-build the image altogether.  taking the input of what you have given it, comparing to what a house in HD should look like, or a grey coat, or a piece of furnature, and rebuilding each element in the frame, trying to closely match its form and lighting but also recognizing what in HD it should look like.    as ib has explained, currently a solution like topaz is grabbing on the grain in the image to understand it better and building out from there, but when you have sources that lack grain (which Sliders s1 is limited on outside of the pilot) it's hard for topaz to get much more out of the image in terms of filling in missing lines  of resolution.    i will say it was much surprior to what an avisynth script was able to do with my brother's old documentary footage, so I think it is indeed quite an accomplishment.   but in the future of any of the technology for this use case may be more similar to the AI image generators we have now, only 1000x better and better able to accurately reconstruct what a 4k scene should reasonably look like based on a low quality source.

I really liked this movie. Thank you to QuinnSlidr for recommending it. I really enjoyed a female Asian senior citizen citizen as the lead character of a fantasy epic with dialogue alternating between English, Mandarin and Cantonese. The movie is clearly on a low budget and staged across two main indoor locations (the laundromat and the IRS office), but it uses those two spaces for a wide range of psychological states for Evelyn's character.

Michelle Yeoh's Evelyn is highly compelling. The wonky, silly, goofy, threatening, dangerous tone of the film as Evelyn learns about her situation is hypnotic. Ke Huy Quan is incredible in shifting between different versions of the Waymond character.

As a multiverse story, this film doesn't have too much bearing on SLIDERS. It's not about alternate histories leading to a bizarre inversion of the present day like "The Weaker Sex" or "Eggheads". The alternate realities are defined in how they have different circumstances for Evelyn: she's a ninja, an actress, a businesswoman, a doctor, a janitor and Waymond has a beautiful line about how Evelyn's failed at so many things that she has created tremendous potential across all her realities for anything.

Evelyn has a hilariously petty moment where, when she first learns about the multiverse, her immediate desire is to tell her husband how in every parallel world, she's better off without him.

That said, two hours is a bit much to spend in the laundromat and the IRS office. This would probably have benefitted from being episodes in their separate parts watched on successive nights.

I really enjoyed the nuclear explosion + timeloop episode of QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 (1.11). "Leap. Die. Repeat" was a fun puzzle and it kept me guessing as to what set off the disaster. And I was just thrilled to see Robert Picardo. QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 has such great guest stars: the soulfully earnest Justin Hartley, the wonderfully strong Carly Pope, the joyfully charismatic Deborah Ann Woll.

Then we come to 1.12, "Let Them Play", the transphobia episode and... I liked it and hated it in so many ways. The 1.12 script is possibly the most 90s style of QL2.0 made to date. It is written in a densely didactic manner with nearly every line of dialogue being a transgender community talking point about transgender inclusivity and alienation and statistics and transphobia. It is a lecturing episode of television.

Let's be blunt: this world is in dire need of lectures. This world is shockingly transphobic whether it's JK Rowling or that alt-right Nazi who used to post here. This world is shockingly hostile towards any identity that isn't straight, white and male: there were some weird bursts of outrage when QL2.0's star was a South Korean actor playing a South Korean character with a South Korean name (that got altered from Seong to Song). If didactism is the brick needed to hammer some respect for people's identities into a few brains, so be it.

That said, the resulting episode has the writing style of a 90s episode of television: everything is severely overstated with every point of argument or information laid out slowly and piece by piece with the (lack of) speed and (slow) pacing of the SLIDERS pilot episode.

In the 90s, character and sociological information came slowly because television was a small, blurry, fuzzy image and interrupted by commercials and the viewer was expected to be distracted real life without any simple way to pause. 90s viewers needed their hands held. In 2023, this style implies the creators don't trust the audience to follow the emotional arc and statistics and details to convey that transphobia is bad.

I'm not sure that the didactism is unneeded; people don't seem to be widely aware that transphobia is bad.

And yet, there is a certain craft to screenwriting to at least disguise the lectures into something resembling human conversation. TV conversations are in not realistic, of course; no one in real life talks like the characters on COMMUNITY. However, TV can create the illusion of naturalism by tricking the viewer's brain into accepting that what's being said out loud is being spontaneously voiced and conceived on the spot by the characters (if not the actors and writers).

QL2.0 has generally been able to maintain some illusion of spontaneity, but for "Let Them Play", it doesn't, not because it can't, but because it chooses not to. "Let Them Play" overstates nearly every point it has to make because it doesn't trust its audience to reject cruelty, hatred, bigotry and harassment.

I am not sure if that mistrust is unwarranted.

Quantum Leap is doing well in +7 ratings

https://tvline.com/lists/new-tv-show-ra … y-percent/

It's possible that TF's theory is correct, but NBC didn't just have the episode reshot and moved back; they proceeded to fire the original showrunners and had Martin Gero take over and rework the original series premiere, so it's very possible that any stylistic flourishes you've enjoyed in later episodes and in this reworked version come from the new showrunner and not his predecessors. Note that you haven't enjoyed the earliest episodes that he had little influence over but your enjoyment has risen with newer episodes and with Gero taking charge.

pilight wrote:

I don't think it's Sam.  Why would he be telling them not to chase him?  Plus Sam is still limited to his own lifetime.  He couldn't be in the 1870's.  So are the Evil Leapers, IIRC.  It has to be Janis.

Sam did leap into the 1860’s in the original series, but the explanation given was that a “glitch” sent Sam into someone along his genetic line of ancestors.  Also, the rules seemed to no longer be relevant for Sam in the original series finale.  Sam was even choosing where he wanted to go at the end.

If it’s not Sam, another explanation could be a kind of pre-destination.  QL never really dealt with this before, but what if the mystery person is someone who Ben hasn’t met yet but will meet?  Ben may be chasing this person somewhere in Ben’s future.  Kind of like how River Song and The Doctor were almost never in sync.

RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:

So quantum leap has done meh in the live ratings and well in streaming (on-demand)

That seems to be a pattern for 10:00 shows.  Big Sky on ABC isn't doing great live but when +3 streaming is added it's doing very well.

This has been simmering for awhile:

https://tvnewscheck.com/journalism/arti … -p-m-news/

Quantum Leap’s time slot will be eliminated.  They could, of course, just put it in another slot; but this move by the network will be eliminating 7 hours of programming each week.  There’s a significant cut coming.  Will only the Dick Wolf umbrella survive on the scripted side?

QuinnSlidr wrote:

Episode 3 of the new Quantum Leap was good.

I agree, and it goes along with my comments on Amazing Stories. Episode 3 of the new Quantum Leap had heart.  Vast improvement over the first two episodes

New Omicron subvariants are coming. They may be immune to antiviral drugs. Immunity from previous infections may offer no aid at all.

It looks like the bivalent booster will likely prevent hospitalization and death, but not infection, as was the case when the Delta and initial Omicron variants hit just as the original vaccines were rolling out. However, for optimal protection, we may need a second dose of the bivalent booster within a few months of the first bivalent dose.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03157-x

There is a very simple countermeasure against Omicron, against any subvariant, against any future variant. It's cheap. It's effective against all viruses and bacteria. It's an electrostatic mask with a good seal. N95, KF94, ASTM or something comparable. Boat shaped or bifold. Or 2D surgicals with cordlocks.

If mask mandates were reinstated and enforced on public transit, in offices, in shopping centres, in grocery stores, in movie theatres, in performance venues, we wouldn't be seeing all these mutations and variants; the virus would have far fewer roads on which to spread.

It really is that simple.