Search options (Page 70 of 79)

It's not always the writers and producers. CBS might say they don't want a youth show; it has to be adults. The studio might have a relationship with certain actors they want and require the series to write in a football player type as the lead love interest. The studio might declare it's vital that Supergirl be working with an establishment agency while the network wants a supporting cast of attractive people who hang out and therefore all need to be in on the secret. It's hard to say. The truth is that the CW is remarkably open-minded these days; a lot of networks might take issue with the distinctly non-model looking Grant Gustin as a lead character or demand that Caitlin be seen in the shower once a week.

You never know. Best we can do is review the aired product.

SUPERGIRL's main problem is that it makes choices that are mutually exclusive. The creators wanted Kara to be in her late 20s and gainfully employed, but they also wanted Kara as socially undeveloped individual who doesn't know how to use her powers. They wanted Kara working at a newspaper, but they also wanted her working in an espionage agency. They wanted Kara to have a secret identity, but they also wanted to surround Kara with a supporting cast who are all in on the secret. They wanted a football player type love interest, but they wanted that love interest to be Jimmy Olsen.

I think Informant would agree that writing is about choices. Either Supergirl is an adolescent or an adult, a journalist or a spy, a loner or a team player. The show tries to do both and it just gets confused -- Kara has to hide her identity, but everyone knows it. She's had her powers for years, but isn't sure she's bulletproof. She's got government black ops access to information, but she's basically an intern at her job. She wants to work in journalism, but she never writes stories and works as a gofer. It's like there were two different pitches for SUPERGIRL -- Kara Danvers, the college student interning at Catco who feels compelled to fight crime and Kara Danvers, secret agent and superheroine -- and they smashed the two together.

The crossover episode was a very nice script that was very awkwardly executed. The climax is bizarre: there is almost no footage of all the civilians and Kara in the same shot, so the sense is that the people and the superfight are footage from two different locations stitched together.

The shot of Livewire and Silver Banshee suddenly getting electroshocked has no visual information to explain why they're suddenly going down. The firemen appear out of nowhere and the low-angle shot suggests that the fireman was actually introduced earlier in a cut scene -- the composition would imply you're supposed to recognize the character as opposed to seeing a stranger.

It's almost as though footage was lost or unfilmed for some reason and the editors had to put the sequence together with shots of extras, close-ups of Benoist and a few shots of Livewire and Banshee being defeated by some off-camera force -- and do without scenes of the firemen arriving, Supergirl surrounded by the people in the park, the water hitting Livewire and Banshee with Supergirl and the people in the same frame, etc..

Did they get kicked out of the park early or something? Did an actor get sick? Was there a hard drive crash? Something clearly went wrong during production.

EDITED TO ADD: Oh. The fireman was in the Red Kryptonite episode in which Kara saved him. Well. I stand by my reasoning.

ME: "Did you listen to the Communitary?"

MATT: "It's just Dan Harmon being a self-destructive tool."

ME: "What did he say that was self destructive?"

MATT: "Just talking about how shitty the episode was, how he knew it was going to be shitty, and when he was pleasantly surprised at it not being shitty, he was still annoyed that it was so shitty."

ME: "So you'll consider my super critical REBORN commentary to be self destructive?"

MATT: "I will if you repeat yourself as hating your creations with EVERY piece of SLIDERS material you EVER generate."

ME: " ... "

**

On the four page teaser that opens SLIDERS REBORN: "So, this four page teaser where Rembrandt comes out of the vortex to find Quinn, Wade and Arturo waiting for him -- it's totally stolen from the conclusion of THE WOLVERINE. Not an original bone in this body, boys."

On the opening scene of "Reunion": "Here, we have Laurel Hills in Quinn's basement. Matt read this scene in the outline and told me off because I failed to include any explanation for why Laurel was in the basement in the first place. I noticed this too when writing the script and decided, on the spot, to give Laurel a drinking problem. Master planner here! I just the story had to start where the Pilot started. Just sentimental, really."

On the third script, "Revelation": "So, this script as outlined was just a series of incoherent action set pieces. Matt read it and had Words for me. Words that induced me to fire him off this project, shortly after he quit. I threw out all the ideas he rubbished and did something else.

"All this stuff with poisoned water and the sliders hiding in a World War II bunker and the doomsday prophecies on the second Earth and the world hit by global dimming in the third -- I love it so much. It's so relevant and meaningful and well-considered and imaginative. Such a skillful hand in world-building. I paid Nigel Mitchell eighty bucks to come up with all this."

On the prequel novella: "So, this novella -- it was originally Part 2 instead of Part 4. The first draft was Quinn spilling his story to his mom who didn't remember him. Matt said it was one of the most unfathomable things he'd ever read because no woman would listen to this deranged story from a crazy person.

"So I decided to set it in a mental asylum with a psychiatrist as the listener so that he'd be getting paid to listen to a deranged story from a crazy person. At one point, Matt remarked, 'the sliders have to try to find Rembrandt for REASONS,' noting I failed to explain WHY the sliders needed Rembrandt to fix the multiverse. Then Matt said, 'No, I get it -- they need Rembrandt because he's the only one who lived out both timelines, right?' I had actually failed to come up with a reason for why they needed Rembrandt other than to get the cast back together, so I used Matt's reason."

**

MATT: "The Dan Harmon Communitary you linked me to -- it's not tongue in cheek. It's not self-deprecating or in praise of others. It's just straight up, 'This is the first time I have seen this episode and I am positive it is going to be shitacular.'"

I guess. To be honest, despite obsessing over it at the writing stage, it's not really a big deal. SLIDERS REBORN starts with a 4-page teaser. It picks up immediately after "The Seer" and we find out who was waiting for Rembrandt on the other side. The next script is 95 pages and set in the year 2015. The sliders are home, have been since 2001. They refer to all the events of Seasons 1 - 5, but clearly, something happened so that all the dead characters are alive and well again. The emphasis is largely on what the sliders are doing TODAY. What's Quinn dealing with at age 43? What's Wade doing at age 44? What did Rembrandt do with his life after stardom eluded him and sliding changed him? And what new challenges has the Professor embraced?

The reason I did it this way -- I don't feel like it's a worthwhile story to split the Quinns, stick Colin, liberate Earth Prime, defeat the Kromaggs, resurrect Wade, find the lost Professor, deal with Logan St. Clair, cure the Professor's illness, track down Henry the Dog -- that isn't SLIDERS to me. So I decided that however those events happened, they happened in 'offscreen' events and skipped ahead to what I care about: Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo bouncing off each other, bickering, teaming up, arguing, joking, laughing, fighting and running in and out of crazy situation after crazy situation. They are four people who don't always get along, often cannot stand each other, and are inextricably bound by fate, friendship and Quinn Mallory's incompetence. Indestructible. Invincible. The Sliders.

So, to me -- the sliders being resurrected and reborn is something we should take for granted. They were separated and they died. And then they came back. Their coming back to us was a cyclical inevitability, an inescapable outcome. They will always come back.

This was a long-winded way of saying there is an explanation but it's not important.

"Slide Effects" and "The Long Slide Home" are two different stories. "Slide Effects" was a story Torme conceived in 1996 as a potential Season 4 premiere. He expected that he would not be happy with Season 3. His intention was that if he returned to the show for Season 4, he would use "Slide Effects" to dismiss everything after "The Guardian."

"The Long Slide Home" is a story Torme started (and did not finish) writing in 2009. It would have made no effort to explain why the original sliders were alive and well; it would have simply been set after "The Guardian" with no reference to any subsequent episodes. This would not have been "Slide Effects," this would have had the plotline of the sliders making a last-ditch effort to get home.

I was chastising Matt for his 2009 interview teasing a Torme story that never was, and Matt told me that "Slide Effects" was unintentionally the Torme story that would serve as the final SLIDERS adventure. I said then the interview should link to the "Slide Effects" script and he said okay.

Final trivia bullet points for the Sliders Rewatch.

Behind the Scenes Information Courtesy of Temporal Flux, Tracy Tormé and Keith Damron

Eye of the Storm Trivia
•  This episode was originally written by Eric Morris, a freelancer who suggested the sliders land on a merged world, encountering guest-stars from previous episodes who have been transplanted to this Earth and are trying to escape.
•  It was meant to be SLIDERS DOES CASABLANCA and to explore how people from different Earths might interact if trapped on a merged world of total contradiction.
•  Quite inexplicably, the production disliked the CASABLANCA resemblances -- but bought the script anyway.
•  By the end of the season, they had no to buy a new one and they needed a seventeenth episode.
•  They had Chris Black hurriedly rewrite it entirely and into the penultimate episode.
•  In the course of the rewrite, the focus on the composite world and the trapped inhabitants was lost, shifting almost entirely to Dr. Geiger and the plot of splitting the Quinns.
•  This episode was also the most expensive episode of Season 5.
•  Throughout Season 5, many episodes were filmed as cheaply as possible, cheaper than usual. The reason for this: production was stockpiling money.
•  They were going to use it for the series finale in which the sliders would return to Earth Prime and confront the Kromaggs once and for all.
•  At the mid-point of the season, production decided to abort the planned finale entirely.
•  Originally, Dr. Geiger's death and giving the sliders their home coordinates was another trick meant to lead into the following episode, although this arc would be abandoned for the actual series finale.
•  All the stockpiled funds were haphazardly thrown into this episode instead.
•  The episode was not significantly rewritten to make use of the money; the intended effects simply had more money put into them.
•  This episode features Jerry O'Connell's face (pulled from "Genesis") shown over Mallory's face.
•  This was achieved after extensive negotiation with Jerry's agent to finally permit them to use past footage and sound clips -- except by the time they got permission, the season was nearly over and it was too late to go back to "The Unstuck Man" and redub "Go! Go!" with sound from a previous episode.
Jerry maintained his refusal to appear, although he certainly had the time to do so.
•  Production had plans to wrap up the series without Jerry, but these plans were thrown out by Bill Dial who decided an another route.

The Seer Trivia
•  John Rhys-Davies declared this to be his favourite episode of SLIDERS. (I'll explain later.)
•  As stated in earlier communications, Bill Dial was angry at Sci-Fi for no longer giving feedback on scripts or reviewing the finished episodes.
•  According to Temporal Flux: Dial decided to get back at Sci-Fi by ending SLIDERS on a cliffhanger in order to see them deluged in fanmail and complaints.
•  There had, originally, been some hope for a Season 6.
Sci-Fi had been experimenting with a low-budget model where shows were made for about $500,000 an episode (in contrast to Season 5's $700,000 - $850,000 budget, numbers from TF, although press indicates the Season 4 - 5 budgets were 1 million per episode, which TF has declared incorrect or I just remember wrong).
•  A Sci-Fi show called G VS. E had been done on $500,000 an episode -- until the production crew union shut the show down for making one crew member do the work of three.
•  Once that happened, the low budget Season 6 -- which would likely have seen the cast reduced to Cleavant and a new actor -- was off the table.
•  Dial knew Season 6 wasn't coming -- but he still aborted the planned ending in favour of a cliffhanger.
•  The original ending for the Season 5 finale: the sliders would return to Earth Prime and fight Kromaggs.
•  It would turn out that Geiger had tricked them, sabotaging their timer to reinstate him to reality.
•  The sliders would get control of Geiger and his technology and create a multiversal 'big crunch' effect where all realities would be collapsed into a single universe and the Kromaggs cast out.
•  The Kromaggs would be defeated, but there would no longer be a multiverse -- only one reality.
•  This would be the end of sliding and the series.
•  TF says he's not sure how well this would have gone over, but production was deliberately making many cheap episodes ("The Great Work," "Please Press One," "Heavy Metal," "To Catch a Slider") in order to use the saved money for this finale.
•  TF says Dial threw this out in favour of having Keith Damron write "The Seer" and threw the savings into "Eye of the Storm."
•  Dial ordered that the series finale end on a cliffhanger.
•  He felt that this would cause outrage and irritation for the Sci-Fi Channel and get back at them for ignoring SLIDERS.
•  He also hoped that the Sci-Fi Channel would notice and protest, thus giving Dial the attention he wanted from them.
•  The Sci-Fi Channel neither noticed nor cared, not during the show and not after the show.
•  No resolution for the cliffhanger was planned; production knew there would be no sixth season.
•  Robert Floyd held out hope.
•  During Season 5, Rob had been very sad that the Quinn/Mallory divide had been lost.
•  He was delighted to play scenes with Mrs. Mallory, Linda Henning, and he was a big fan of her work on PETTICOAT JUNCTION.
•  Rob deliberately did not watch the Pilot, wanting to play Mallory's scenes with Mrs. Mallory as raw and painful.
•  This episode confirms onscreen that Mallory's father was Michael but his mother was another woman as he does not recognize Amanda Mallory.
•  Rob liked these scenes because he was able to play the loss of Quinn, something he himself had felt since "New Gods For Old."
•  When Mallory says that a part of Quinn is still in him, Rob played this as Mallory telling a kind lie -- with the feeling that while Mallory didn't want Quinn back, Rob certainly did.
•  The ending of "The Seer" is considered by the fanbase to be the final betrayal of their loyalty where Dial and Damron could tell any story they wanted and told this one, resolving nothing, wrapping up nothing, creating a cliffhanger that would never be resolved.
•  Paradoxically, Cleavant was in favour of the cliffhanger, according to Matt Hutaff, who met with Cleavant at a CD signing.
•  Cleavant pushed hard for "The Seer" to end with Rembrandt leaping into a vortex aimed for home without revealing what happened next.
•  Cleavant felt that this way, the fans could imagine whatever they wanted being on the other side of the vortex. Maybe Wade. The Professor. Quinn. The real Earth Prime. A happy ending.
•  Cleavant also ensured that the ending has Rembrandt taking the broken timer with him. Cleavant felt that the timer could always be repaired on the next world and the adventure could begin again.
•  The fans have largely excused Cleavant from any blame for the cliffhanger.
•  John Rhys-Davies, at an August 2012 Toronto convention, was asked which episode of SLIDERS he liked best.
•  "What was my favourite episode of SLIDERS?!" John exclaimed.
•  After a moment's thought, he growled: "The last one."

The Feature Film That Never Was
•  After SLIDERS was cancelled, creators Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss, participated in online chats.
•  Both apologized to the fans for Seasons 3 - 5.
•  Torme explained that he had left SLIDERS because he was burnt out from the fights with the FOX Network.
•  He had fought hard in Seasons 1 - 2, only to get to Season 3 and see Quinn become an action hero and Rembrandt become a Navy gunslinger and Wade become a model and the Professor become the wise old man with no dark side.
•  At this point, Tracy's dad got really sick and was dying and Tracy very much didn't give a shit about SLIDERS in the face of family crisis.
•  He decided he'd rather hang out with his dad.
•  In public chats, Weiss said that he had left SLIDERS after Season 1 to focus on running his film and technology companies -- but he was approaching Universal about a SLIDERS movie.
•  Torme, in chats, said he didn't believe a movie would happen and that it was mostly Weiss operating on that front.
•  During this time, I asked Tracy over AIM: if he had one more SLIDERS episode, what would he do?
•  He said he would open with Quinn waking up in his bedroom to find time had been rewound to the Pilot. All the original sliders would be alive and well and back home; sliding was never created.
•  The situation would be revealed as a Kromagg trick along with any other episodes Torme didn't like or watch.
•  According to Temporal Flux, production sent Tracy scripts for Seasons 4 - 5, but he put them away in their unopened envelopes and refused to read them because he knew they would only drive him crazy.
•  Weiss, when asked which season of the show the film would resemble, said "Season 1.5."
•  Jerry O'Connell initially declared that he would not do a SLIDERS movie.
•  After TOMCATS bombed, Jerry said that he would do a SLIDERS movie if there were a role for Charlie O'Connell in the film.
•  After KANGAROO JACK destroyed his film star career and he was passed over for the role of Peter Parker in SPIDER-MAN,  Jerry said he was extremely anxious to do a SLIDERS movie.
•  Cleavant was keen to return and said that he'd spoken to Sabrina Lloyd and John Rhys-Davies. They would return if the original creators did as well.
•  Unfortunately, the movie revival never happened; Universal had no interest in reviving the series.
•  In an interview, Torme said that one idea that Robert K. Weiss suggested for a film was for Quinn to be unstuck and ending up in the bodies of different doubles.
•  Torme liked the idea but shot it down on the grounds that it was too much like QUANTUM LEAP.
•  Temporal Flux had some contact with Weiss and Weiss was mysterious on his intentions for the film, but TF said the likelihood was that the film would have been a remake of the Pilot but set in the present day.
•  The original cast would return but they'd be playing older doubles on an Earth where Quinn discovers sliding, not in 1995, but in whatever year the film was made.
•  It is, of course, only TF's theory and an idea TF came up with rather than what Weiss shared, but it certainly seems plausible as Weiss said he wanted to do "Season 1.5" and this would be a way of setting aside the continuity issues of Seasons 3 - 5 that could confuse a general audience, focusing on reintroducing SLIDERS with an entry-level story.
•  The proposed SLIDERS film was frequently teased but never greenlit.
•  Jerry O'Connell made an effort in 2013 to see a film revival, hoping to assemble Torme and the original cast to approach NBCUniversal.
•  He called Tracy Torme and they talked and met extensively and began reaching out to the key players.
•  Sabrina was living in Africa and unlikely to return to America for a few years.
•  Cleavant was enthusiastic.
•  John could not be reached.
•  NBCUniversal was once again not interested.
•  As of 2016, there has been no further development towards a SLIDERS film.

The 2009 Series Finale That Never Was
•  In 2009, Tracy Torme, while being interviewed for Earth Prime via Facebook, expressed a desire to write fanfic.
•  Torme told Matt that he would like to write a script for the fans.
•  He wanted to write what he termed "the officially unofficial series finale," unapproved by NBCUniversal or FOX or the Sci-Fi Channel, to be posted as a PDF on Dimension of Continuity and Earth Prime with the document to be added to any future SLIDERS DVD or blu-ray releases.
•  While Torme completed an outline, he did not finish the script and eventually left Facebook, needing to focus on paid projects.
•  Torme's story idea was for a script set in 1997, after the events of "The Guardian," effectively dismissing any episodes after his final story.
•  In this story, the sliders find that Logan's modifications to the timer have damaged its function.
•  Slide windows are getting shorter and shorter and the vortex is weakening. They are near the end of their journey and likely to be stranded once the timer fails.
•  They must begin to consider that their next slide could be their last.
•  Torme said that the story would ask: What if the sliders found the way home but Quinn didn't make it? And what if the sliders had to decide whether or not they'd lose their way home to save their friend?
•  This was as much as Tracy sent Matt.
•  Then Torme got busy with paid projects and pilots and he stopped working on the story.
•  He eventually ceased all Facebook activity and fell out of touch.
•  However, during my IM sessions with Tracy, I asked him how he'd like to end the series.
•  He said he liked the idea of Quinn and Arturo making a final, desperate attempt to get home -- by rigging the timer to send the sliders backwards through the interdimension, hoping that in sliding back across previous Earths, they can slide back home.
•  They'd confront numerous past enemies and friends and see the consequences of their actions on previous Earths.
•  Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would get home while Quinn was stranded in a deadly situation -- and the other three sliders would go back to save Quinn but in doing so, they'd lose their route home and be sliders lost in the multiverse once again.
•  Quinn would be furious that his friends threw away their chance of home.
•  His friends would answer they were each other's world now and so long as they were together, they were home.
•  Quite strangely, Temporal Flux himself proposed this exact same idea once as a potential series finale, offering the sentiment that "Home isn't just a place, it's the people you love."
•  Would Tracy have used this ending for his proposed series finale?
•  I think it is likely it would have been his intention.
•  However, Torme was notorious for writing an outline and then writing a script where he'd diverge from the outline, struck by inspiration as he scripted the dialogue and action, so he may have changed his mind later on in the process.
•  While Torme's intentions never came to fruition, it inspired me -- because if posting PDF screenplays on the SLIDERS sites is good enough for him, it's good enough for me too.

I'm afraid, due to an incomplete backup before running the latest Android update, I lost all my notes (and two weeks worth of text messages). So, this is more a stream of consciousness based on what I remember marking up rather than the actual notes.

The only grammatical issues I would draw your attention to: in one section, you wrote "junkie" as "junky," so I'd do a find and replace for that. In various places, you neglect to use the second conditional form for describing hypothetical situations. You use "was" when you should use "were" -- there's a pretty simple summary at http://writingexplained.org/was-vs-were-difference -- and you can probably find every instance in your manuscript by running a search for "was." I would try this out for you, but my phone is still rebooting.

I think there were a few typos, but I have lost my bookmarks, so... tough.

In terms of the story, I think it's well written and a riveting, compelling, emotional adventure. Your political issues and the painfully fascistic environment comes through well and I really felt Collin's outrage and despair. Collin's enlightened yet helpless state of mind contrasts nicely with Libby's deluded belief that the authorities are all trustworthy and one can do right simply by surrendering to anyone in power.  The entire sequence where Libby goes to Sim and agrees to turn herself in to clear her name only to discover this is nothing but a comforting fiction for the gullible -- it's masterfully written and it really gives a full and stirring portrait of what it's like both inside and outside this societal prison.

Collin's defiant surrender with a statement at the end -- if you were going for the character purposefully doing something practically pointless but personally meaningful, then I guess it's fine. However, the prose seemed to present it as a critical step in the narrative as well as Collin's own journey and -- I'm not sure there was enough there to really sell why Collin's letter is going to make a difference.

I would say the story, such as it is, suffers from being the opening act of a larger story and within this individual episode, there isn't a full or complete arc. I don't feel the Libby and Collin have come to a point where I'm satisfied to step back from the story for now and wait for the next installment; I don't feel like I've hit a jumping point for the next book -- I feel like I've read a fraction of a novel and there's the sense of the story just cutting off as opposed to creating a cliffhanger or a transition point. The vague indications of something malicious in the body just isn't enough to hang onto.

I don't know if it's helpful to refer to other novels in this dystopian genre, but the first HUNGER GAMES left us with Katniss having discovered her own strengths and weaknesses even if the villains remained all-powerful; the first DIVERGENT book ended with Tris willfully leaving behind the society she'd known. The characters had achieved something, albeit something small and personal. With FREEDOM/HATE, Libby and Collin have made a few tentative steps towards something or other --it's not clear. Libby still instinctively trusts in the authorities despite their pursuit of her; Collin has gone from being a low-ranking rebel to being a low-ranking rebel with a would-be manifesto.

I don't know if this is something you could address or would even want to at this point, but I didn't feel very satisfied with this one episode even though the writing was strong.

If I weren't familiar with your writing to begin with, I don't know if I would feel sufficiently invested to keep an eye out for the sequel. I feel confident that you're going somewhere interesting based on having read your previous work and you've earned my trust that your setups will lead to worthy payoffs -- but FREEDOM/HATE, within its pages, doesn't give me anything to reinforce that confidence.  It's well-worded, gripping prose, but it doesn't overcome the weakness that it's not a complete story, just a portion of one. The end of FREEDOM/HATE's first volume hasn't provided anything concrete to serve as temporary ending.

Oh. I've only seen Megan Fox in the two TRANSFORMERS movies,  JENNIFER's BODY, NINJA TURTLES and JONAH HEX and I've only seen Alba in the two F4 movies, INTO THE BLUE and GOOD LUCK CHUCK. So okay. Maybe they got better or I only saw them in their Razzie performances.

Well. That is tough. But I will have your notes for you tomorrow on your novel.

VAL: "Why is Barry working cases fresh out of a coma? Every defence lawyer in the world would get his work thrown out of court."

ME: " ... shut up... "

VAL: "And does he work in that lab all by himself? Like, there's only one criminal scientist in the whole police department? And nobody worked there while he was in a coma?"

ME: " ... shut up... "

VAL: "And when the sky rips open from the black hole -- why did they include that random shot of that one actress for no reason whatsoever?"

ME: "Because she's going to play Hawkgirl in a spinoff. I mean -- shut up... "

Jerry's 1994 hair would look great today.

Well, I had to leave my car at the mechanic, and with several hours to wait, I decided to go to the movies. I saw BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN and this film has me exclaiming: I've seen worse!!!

Spoilers

I thought it was good. Not great. It made some critical errors. Basically, Superman in this movie is handled awkwardly. The script puts Superman and Clark Kent at such a vast distance from the audience that it's impossible to really get a feel for who he is or what he's feeling. Superman in this movie is aloof, unreadable, unknowable -- even when he really shouldn't be.

The movie is shockingly unclear on what Superman has been doing since MAN OF STEEL. We get a lot of talking heads about his actions, but the prequel comics do more to show him engaged in emergency response and humanitarian efforts than this film. We get a few scenes of Superman rescuing people from fire and flood -- and they don't work. Superman is either filmed from far angles or played by Henry Cavill with such rigid solemnity that it's hard to get a read on him. Does he care about people? Does he feel called to save them? What drives him to do whatever it is he's doing? It's impossible to tell because so little of the film is spent engaged in superheroics.

Tom Welling, when engaged in super-saves on SMALLVILLE, was aided by directors and writers who made saving people a visual spectacle of excitement. Zack Snyder has a few shots of Superman coming out of a burning building and hovering over flooded cities like it's an obligatory detail to brush over. Tom Welling played his supersaves with an urgent gentleness; he cared about people. Henry Cavill plays these brief scenes with an inscrutable coldness.

On some level, this is deliberate -- this is really a BATMAN movie and we're supposed to understand how Bruce sees Superman. In the absence of knowledge, Bruce assumes malice and threat. But the movie never gives you any visceral, emotional way to feel otherwise because Cavill and Snyder have completely failed to portray Superman with compassion or empathy. 

When the Senate is bombed, Superman stands in the midst of the explosion, surrounded by people in the process of being incinerated -- and Cavill's reaction is just frozen blankness. Tom Welling's Clark would have been grief-stricken, enraged, agonized, tried to grab as many as he could and get them to a hospital. Snyder's Superman is never shown to even try; you're supposed to just assume he did all that.

Thankfully, Affleck's Bruce Wayne is an extremely compelling, riveting presence in the film and without him, there would be nothing to watch. Bruce's loathing towards Superman is completely palpable and on some level feels reasonable because of how unpleasant Superman's presence comes off. The turnaround in his character is absurd, yet Affleck totally sells why Batman has a change of heart and Slider_Quinn21's grousing about Affleck being too old to play this character looks even more ridiculous in a post-release era.

Affleck's physical presence is incredibly convincing and most importantly, Affleck works as a very different Batman from Christian Bale. This Bruce isn't a distant intellectual whose combat skills are a means to an end; he thrives on physicality whether it's wine, women or war. This Batman is prepared to kill in the sense that he's a soldier fighting a war and while he doesn't set out to murder, he doesn't shed a tear for criminals getting blown up or crushed by overturned cars. It's an uncomfortable turn for Batman -- except Affleck's world-weary, hardened Bruce makes it clear this is a superhero who has had to set aside some of his idealism to survive and keep going.

I confess, however -- at times, I struggled to see Bruce Wayne, instead seeing a ridiculously famous actor known more for his interpersonal scandals than his characters.

Wonder Woman's not much of a character, but she's delightfully portrayed by Gal Godot in her fencing with Bruce and her laughter when battling Doomsday. Lex is good, although his bombing of the Senate seems oddly pointless. The movie has some truly peculiar sequences -- a future vision of a malevolent Superman and a Batman at war, a strange visit from the Flash calling attention to Lois in a subplot that has no payoff -- it's awkward. The final battle sequence in Gotham seems to take place in a shadowy landscape of nowhere with no sense of geography. The ending depends on being moved by Superman's sacrifice except Superman has been such a cold figure of nothing that it doesn't really work.

As ZACK SNYDER's SUPERMAN and ZACK SNYDER's BATMAN -- it's good enough, but it's not great, mostly because Superman's so detached that it's hard to enjoy the movie and I really can't tell what this movie is trying to say about superheroes or anything, really. MAN OF STEEL, regardless of its faults, was about a man taking control of his destiny and choosing who he wanted to be. BVS is about a man who feels powerless and... I dunno, fights a giant monster and then something or other. At least MAN OF STEEL's destruction porn is redeemed now.

As I said -- I've seen worse!

You're talking to us right now. Just send me an E-mail or PM using the links next to this post.

Well, the first script was 4-pages. The second one is 95. The third one is 151. Then there's the the novella, which I estimate at 35 pages. I did have some concerns, but, as I told Matt, I just couldn't see it as a *bad* thing to give readers *more* of what they came for, which is the original quartet bouncing off each other.

I think the final script will be 120 pages.

I know, intellectually, that Kara's geeky, awkward nervousness is a performance. It's not Melissa's real voice, posture, bearing or facial expressions -- but to me, it doesn't come off as a performance, it's just Kara's natural behaviour. When she's in costume, she's still Kara -- she's just a version of Kara who isn't struggling with her interpersonal dilemmas, and the interactions she has with others are largely restricted to their grateful praise or homicidal malevolence. Which is why, whenever that persona drops, I'm really disturbed. But I take it you don't like Melissa's performance at all?

*shudders*

Red!Kara terrified me. I cowered under my blanket when she swaggered into the nightclub and nearly crushed Jimmy's hand. It just freaked me out. A lot. I watched AMERICAN HORROR STORY without flinching, but this was just disturbing.

Tom and Cory had some interesting thoughts on the Kromagg in "Slide Effects," remarking that they preferred the unknowable Kromaggs of "Invasion" to the space Nazis of Season 4. They talked about how the Kromaggs in Season 4 lacked the creepy, malevolent anonymity of the "Invasion" Kromaggs and how they also disliked the shapeshifting, although it could simply be a Kromagg application of telepathy. Tom was a little unsure of what to make of the shapeshifting in "Slide Effects." I think it's safe to say that with most of the script set in a dreamscape, most of the shapeshifting is telepathic.

When the sliders come out of the dreamscape, however, the Kromagg keeps shapeshifting in reality -- turning into Mallory, Maggie, Diana and Colin and repeating lines from their episodes. While I totally agree with Tom and Cory that the shapeshifting is an awkward and silly superpower, it was necessary to visually indicate that the Kromagg is trapped in the hell he made.

But I guess we could say that the Kromagg was unconsciously projecting his telepathic form into the sliders' minds even though they'd stepped out of his simulation?

To be fair to Season 4, I think we have to assume that the Kromaggs have individuality. They're not all one hive mind, at least not as far as Tracy Torme is concerned -- he had Kromagg women looting human stores in "Invasion" in a deleted scene. But then we have to wonder how universal the contempt for humans is among the Kromaggs -- they can't all be monsters, can they? To assume an entire race is of one identical personality is absurd. Not every Kromagg can or should be the same (unless you want to think that they're all telepathically linked and replicate the same mind across each body?). The Kromagg of "Slide Effects" is described as an "Invasion" Kromagg.

However, I cannot claim to have any great insights into the Kromaggs. The Kromagg of "Slide Effects" has pretty much nothing to do with Tracy Torme's vision of the Kromaggs and the Dynasty and is not even meant to be a reaction to the Season 4 Kromaggs.

The Kromagg of "Slide Effects" simply represents David Peckinpah: an angry person dispatched to a job he didn't want (overseeing the sliders/SLIDERS), getting trapped in the job due to a telepathic misfire/contractual obligation) and lashing out in rage at Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo / Sabrina and John. The Kromagg never speaks -- simply because I had been watching SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES that week and was really taken with how the shapeshifting Chameleon would always shift into a different character to deliver any dialogue and had never spoke in his own form.

I honestly wonder how much Torme could have maintained the anonymity of the Kromaggs had they returned on his terms.

ME: "There is a series of 22 fan written LOIS AND CLARK novellas that make up the fifth season of the show as it was cancelled in year four for three different reasons." http://www.lcfanfic.com/thm-tufs.htm "I wonder if we can get Tom and Cory to review them."

MATT: "What three reasons? And I doubt they'll commit to reviewing fanfic like that."

ME: "Based on what?"

MATT: "Based on them wanting to review television, not fanfic."

ME: "It was well received."

MATT: "Then YOU review it."

ME: "I'm not even sure I'll survive this Rewatch. And what do you mean, what were the reasons? You said you read that retrospective I linked to."

MATT: "I did. It all sounded like it was cancelled because ABC/Disney was over the series. Eisner wanted his dumb World of Disney back on the air so he could replace Walt in the hearts and minds of America. The easiest reason is that Teri Hatcher cut her hair. That is an unimpeachable reason."

ME: "Wonderful World was Reason 1. Reason 2 was ABC's continued retooling of the series causing the ratings to slide bit by bit -- they fired the showrunner of Season 1 and mandated an action-oriented approach that the budget couldn't handle and also outlandish supervillains that could not be rendered properly on a TV scale at that era, meaning all the villains were campy, silly, embarrassing and alienating while gobbling up screentime that would have been devoted to the two stars -- and when you're selling your show on Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain and they're in it half as much as they used to be, the audience loses interest. The point where the ratings were totally destroyed, however -- was the wedding episode where ABC, at the last second, declared that Lois and Clark were not to be married after all and that something had to stop the wedding -- so Lois gets kidnapped and gets amnesia and is replaced by a frog-eating clone. This story arc lasted eight episodes and it drove viewers away in droves."

MATT: "Hahaahahahah! Yes. But that was season THREE."

ME: "By Season 4, the ratings were pretty much dead and despite a Season 5 renewal having been issued -- ABC, having destroyed the show, now stopped advertising it and re-negotiated to get out of doing Season 5. They were still unable to get out of it entirely -- until Teri Hatcher, after Season 4, got pregnant and her doctor said her pregnancy was not stable and she could not work and Season 5's start date would have to be delayed by months. ABC and Disney took that news and collectively declared that the show was done."

MATT: "Stupid babies ruin EVERYTHING!"

ME: "So there were lots of reasons."

MATT: "HAIR CUT."

ME: "Given how god-awful Season 4 was, I was pretty relieved when the show was cancelled and excited about SMALLVILLE -- But SMALLVILLE was even worse than LOIS & CLARK."

MATT: "Oh yeah?

ME: "SMALLVILLE is one of the worst shows ever made -- although it improved significantly with Seasons 8 - 9 only to weirdly implode on itself with the last half of Season 10.

MATT: "Hahahahahaha!  Ten seasons! You really commit to shitty television!"

ME: "Anyway! This Unaired Fifth Season -- it's really good! So well written! I think, because they had 12 writers on it -- and 1- 2 would go over all the drafts and revise them. I'm sure Tom and Cory could read them all and talk about them in their podcast. Surely they don't want to end on a down note!!!!!"

MATT: "Blecgh!"

ME: "What is the reason for your distaste NOW!?"

MATT: "It's a lot easier to read your one script than 22 novellas."

ME: "At one point, Tom said he assumes each REBORN script is 46 pages."

MATT: "I know. I laughed."

ME: "It's currently 285 pages. But it's 285 pages of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo bickering. That's what the fans want, Matt!
Nobody really cares about the parallel worlds. It's all about these four messed up people and their weird friendship together. And their desperate efforts to graduate from community college!"

MATT: "Two HUNDRED AND EIGHTY FIVE pages??? Jesus!!"

It's available streaming on Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Pilot/dp/B003VLU1 … +and+clark And you can get the whole DVD set off Amazon for about $60 whether it's as separate seasons or all four in one set. You can buy all four seasons digitally for $60 as well.

Rewatched the Pilot today -- it is so frustrating to see how well-done, well-considered, well-cast and well-written the Pilot is compared to where LOIS & CLARK ended up. Shows like SMALLVILLE and HEROES made so many stupid mistakes -- overly powerful heroes, a reluctance to show superheroes onscreen in live action, struggling to find stories each week -- but LOIS & CLARK had prepared for all these challenges.

It was focused on LOIS and CLARK and Superman only made cameo appearances. The Daily Planet was a limitless source of stories that would put Lois and Clark in different situations. The dilemmas revolved around Clark getting caught in bad situations where using his powers would expose his identity or endanger others. The world around Lois and Clark was grounded and realistic with only Superman as a fantasy element. Deborah Joy Levine, the Season 1 showrunner, had completely worked out how the series could function week to week.

And then, piece by piece, all the strengths of the Pilot and Season 1 were gradually dismantled. Instead of using the Daily Planet to come up with stories, the new showrunners came up with ridiculous supervillains that were unthreatening figures of comedy. Instead of focusing on Clark's difficulties, the showrunners focused on Superman-heavy stories that could not be rendered convincingly due to the budget. The world around Lois and Clark became exaggerated, silly and absurd and Superman faded into the background despite appearing more. Lois became a hysterical figure of lunacy rather than the tough, capable journalist and investigator. All due to the network's continued attempts to force LOIS & CLARK into being a superhero show and a sitcom rather than a dramedy about journalists, one of whom happened to be Superman. God damn it.

SMALLVILLE is weird to me. The majority of its episodes are quite awful, in my opinion, but the first season is full of potential and the eighth and ninth season are superb. The tenth season is good but then falls apart in the final run of episodes. The Season 11 comic books are also good but, again, fall apart near the end.

SMALLVILLE, for Seasons 1 - 7, suffered from when it was made and who was making it. After BATMAN & ROBIN, there was a great distaste for superheroes in live action, so SMALLVILLE was made with an aversion to superhero imagery or storytelling despite being a SUPERMAN TV series. Due to all the self-imposed limitations, the series got locked into a very tight and restrictive formula; monsters of the week who would be dealt with in repetitive scenes of Clark throwing them thirty feet, and an incredibly monotonous seven years of Clark and Lana circling around each other.

The show seemed incapable of moving past these two areas for Seasons 1 - 7, and the main problem was the showrunners. Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were buddy cop screenwriters who wanted to do BRUCE WAYNE: THE SERIES only to settle for the Superman rights. They threw the Pilot together haphazardly, sold it as a series -- and promptly ran out of ideas.

As showrunners, they spent most of their time writing screenplays for other movies, barely paying attention to SMALLVILLE and dictating a rigid and unchanging status quo so that they could periodically write or direct an episode without needing to deal with what the other writers had conceived. Often, other writers would come up with ideas, see them approved only for Gough and Millar to abruptly backtrack. They were also based largely in LA, rarely being on the scene in Vancouver to see what was being filmed or performed, and were blind to things like the lack of romantic chemistry between Clark and Lana. They threw out dictates like making Lionel Luthor a regular cast member even though the writers didn't know what to do with him. When they felt that plotting arcs for Clark Kent's college years was too troublesome, they ordered that Clark become a college dropout.

Also, the repetitive writing created numerous problems (characters seeing Clark use his powers, a small town population that should have been traumatized by 3 - 4 murders a week) that weren't addressed.

Season 1 saw numerous writers struggling with these limitations and then quitting en masse to less aggravating TV shows because Gough and Millar would remove running plots and refuse to let Clark be vulnerable in any way to the Kryptonite mutants. The Season 1 staff went onto HOUSE, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA, HEROES, DEXTER and EVERWOOD -- all because they were sick of Gough and Millar.

Gough and Millar quit after Season 7 (having had enough producer credits on enough episodes for syndication royalties). The remaining writers all received promotions and asked Tom Welling to work with them. Season 8 - 10 saw a massive upswing in quality and consistency: Clark donned a prototype Superman costume and started working in Metropolis and the show became the superhero show it had been ashamed to be previously. The Clark/Lana romance was replaced with the far more endearing Clark/Lois dynamic. The show, previously clumsy and repetitive white person angst, shifted into a larger than life superhero fantasy.

But mis-steps were made. Season 8 built up a fight with Doomsday that the majority of fans and reviewers declared anti-climactic due to its brevity. Season 9 had Clark using heat vision to destroy two buildings that would have otherwise given Kryptonian conquerers superpowers, but the imagery was upsetting to the fans. Season 10 collapsed upon itself when the great threat of Darkseid and his minions were vanquished by Clark flying through Darkseid and his telekinetic and indestructible henchmen being killed by arrows they had so casually stopped in mid-air in previous episodes. The finale was an incoherent mess.

Season 11 was a series of comics written by one of the staff writers, Bryan Q. Miller. It was good to start, distinguishing itself from the mainstream Superman comics by emphasizing that Superman was actually a team effort in SMALLVILLE. Unfortunately, halfway into it, the weekly schedule of the comic had artists rushing through their work. As a result, the likenesses of the actors were lost; the SMALLVILLE cast, once rendered with loving attention to the actors' faces, now looked generic and like they could be in any Superman comic. A lot of the appeal of the comic was lost and the series ended on a decent but ultimately un-SMALLVILLE-esque storyline -- the writing was always great, but if Clark and Chloe don't look like Tom Welling and Allison Mack, the comic has no reason to exist.

SMALLVILLE, to me, was, an interesting failure. And yet -- you don't get to the magnificent ARROW and FLASH and SUPERGIRL shows and the Marvel Cinematic Universe without SMALLVILLE. But it was made at a time when superheroes in live action were out of style. It was created by writers who didn't understand superheroes or television. And that always crippled it.

Well, I have been forced to abandon my Nexus S. Don't get me wrong, it was a nice phone back in 2010 when I was using it for phone calls and texting via SMS, Hangouts and Facebook and for E-mail. But. It can't run Google Maps properly. The app freezes or crashes. The budget priced Moto E 2nd Gen I got my mother can run Google Maps easily on 1GB of RAM and a cheap processor, but the single-core Nexus S and its 500MB of RAM just can't make it work. I'll keep it on hand as a backup phone, but I've come to depend on Google Maps for navigation in the car so it wouldn't be a long-term backup.

Hey, who's the voice of Wade?

**

It was very touching for "Slide Effects" to be treated as a *real* episode of SLIDERS. Matt and I recently had a conversation where I chastised him for his 2009 Tracy Torme interview announcing a SLIDERS project that never took place. Matt replied that "Slide Effects" was, albeit unintentionally, the SLIDERS project because without the interview, "Slide Effects" wouldn't have been written and that whether by design or accident, "Slide Effects" is the series finale of SLIDERS.

**

I was particularly struck by the music Tom and Cory used during their dramatic readings -- it really captured the eerie sense of unreality behind the scenes.

**

I totally agree with Cory that the Professor's first scene in the story is very forced and unnatural. Of all the random people with whom Quinn could get in a car accident, it happens to be the Professor? How the hell does that happen? It happens, as Tom observes, because Torme said this was to be a one-episode story and I limited myself to 46-pages (46 minutes). Tom wonders where the commercials would go. I have no idea whatsoever. I needed the Professor back as soon as possible and I felt he should be yelling.

**

The idea that Rembrandt told Quinn there was a steakhouse he had planned to eat at after the game is indeed, as Cory states, a retcon never once established on the show. Whaddya gonna do, right? I figure you can justify it  by adding in other details that were established onscreen.

**

Cory, quite reasonably, describes the explanation for Seasons 3 - 5 as "cumbersome." The idea that Seasons 3 - 5 are the amalgamated experiences of 37 Quinn-doubles combined and streamed into Quinn's head as a telepathic simulation to torment him, resulting from a completely DIFFERENT simulation meant to be a simulation of Earth Prime -- Tom struggles to wrap his mouth around that explanation and audibly loses steam halfway in.

Oddly, Torme's explanation is very simple -- the Earth Prime situation is revealed to be a Kromagg trick along with Seasons 3 - 5. Yet, the details visibly strain to justify why the Kromaggs would do any of this. Torme didn't come up with a motive.

I settled on, "The illusion of Earth Prime is meant to psychologically motivate them to find home -- but we got Seasons 3 - 5 because there was a GLITCH."  Still, it's hard to explain why the Kromagg felt the need to deliberately subject Quinn to Seasons 3 - 5 outside the plot requiring that he do so and a vague sense of sadism.

Then comes the need to declare that Seasons 3 - 5 happened, just to a *different* set of Quinns -- and the result is the Kromagg going Full Diggs to lay out the Earth Prime simulation, the glitch, and me trying to liven it up by having the Kromagg take on the forms of different Season 3 - 5 characters. So what we have here is a situation where the general overview appears acceptable -- Seasons 3 - 5 were a Kromagg trick -- but when we get into the details, it becomes quite convoluted.

I imagine Torme would have side-stepped all that simply by focusing on the Earth Prime situation and barely referring to the episodes after his departure, making the confrontation more about the Kromaggs tempting the sliders with a permanent illusion of home because even if they got home for real, the Kromaggs would destroy it. But that just wasn't where my interest was -- I wanted to do Forrest Gump style scenes of the original sliders inserted into "Mother and Child" and directly repudiate The Scene. As a result, "Slide Effects" took a turn into metatextual fan writing.

**

Tom and Cory note that the Care Bears style conclusion seems similar to "The Dream Masters" -- which is hilarious, because I have never seen it. I've also never seen "Electric Twister Acid Test" or "Easy Slider" and no force on Earth can make me watch them. The only reason I noticed the similarities myself is because screencaps were present in Ian McDuffie's episode blog.

**

Cory said he was confused by where the room was that the sliders wake up in -- it's meant to be just a cave, which I thought I established with the Kromagg referring to "an underground chamber," but I guess an extra INT. CAVE would have helped.

I appreciated the boys reacting to the final scene and the shock. I just did that because I didn't want it to be a uniformly happy ending -- it needed a touch of darkness so that Seasons 3 - 5 have some emotional impact.

I think the reason "Slide Effects" manages to transcend its issues, however, is because, as Cory and Tom note, it is focused entirely on Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. Splitting the Quinns, Kromagg Prime, sticking Colin -- all that's labelled as the concerns of different sets of sliders. Torme's plot was splendid and it's a shame it wasn't the premiere for the Sci-Fi Channel years. I was very pleased that Cory noted that the happiest ending for SLIDERS is one where they're having wonderful adventures together.

**

I look forward to the boys getting into SLIDERS REBORN when it's done. REBORN has an alternate explanation for the sliders' resurrections and I suspect it's just as cumbersome, but it served my ends. "Slide Effects" is a vision of SLIDERS being filmed in 2000; REBORN is a vision of SLIDERS being filmed in 2015 with the conceit that SLIDERS was an X-FILES-level hit that just never got revived until last year.

**

There was some other behind the scenes stuff, but I think I shall post that when Cory and Tom start the LOIS & CLARK rewatch. And I shall be following along and responding to every single episode and watching two episodes with them every week! I have no behind the scenes info on LOIS & CLARK (unless you want scandalous rumours about Dean Cain's lovelife), but I love superheroes and will be thrilled to revisit the 90s with our podcasters.

Recovering from illness this past week. I'll read and review your book this Thursday/Friday.

Laurie recently got a superphone and returned my Nexus S to me. It's a 2010 Android phone, designed by Google, running Android 4.4.4. I decided to set it up as a backup phone and I noticed something weird; the partition is split between data (where the OS and all the apps are installed) and storage (where I can store files). This is an outdated partition scheme; modern Android has the OS on a system partition, but apps and files share the storage partition. Which makes me wonder -- could your S4 be operating on a similar partitioning scheme where your apps are simply being moved to a different partition on the internal memory instead of the external storage?

(Probably not, but I wanted to ask.)

The Nexus S and its single core processor and 500MB of RAM are woefully inadequate for multitasking and it slows to a crawl when downloading apps -- but once everything's installed, it gets the job done. The Nexus S ROM is shockingly small; there's 12GB of free space even with a full complement of apps. But the lack of external memory support prevents it from being something I'd use long-term and I suspect it would choke on Google Maps. But I might use it when I travel and want to use a phone I'm willing to lose.

And here we are again, standing at the edge of infinity, looking into the darkest abyss. A place where there is no mercy, no escape, no hope and no way out -- but for some reason, there are rock star vampires and amusement parks that feed on negative emotions and toy cars with laser cannons. A place where even Marc Scott Zicree lost the will to go on after "The Chasm." Truly, this is the darkest timeline.

I can't remember if LOIS & CLARK got this bad. Let's find out! :-D

There would be precedent in the previous series if GIRL MEETS WORLD presented Riley and Maya as a gay couple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jmgmYdHLxI

Is the Lucas/Maya/Riley triangle really a problem for them? Couldn't they just have a threeway?

I watch most of my 4:3 DVDs in 16:9 with non-linear stretching using Cyberlink PowerDVD. I think you would be very impressed by the conversion. There is no distortion. The cropping is slight and barely noticeable. The result is an image that fills the screen without much, if any, loss of picture and the shot composition is actually enhanced because there is no distracting pillarboxing.

You can upscale and smart-stretch even without having shot it in 16:9.

Hey, RussianCabbie, check your E-mail. There is one key contact for a blu-ray release that we need YOUR help on! :-D