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Maybe it's just me -- but I fail to see how missing episodes on Hulu and Netflix could truly prevent any of us from watching them anyway. I mean, we're SLIDERS fans, for God's sake. We may as well have invented the Internet when it comes to TV shows.

(I'm using various qualifiers in case Temporal Flux sweeps in and has exact and precise information that makes me wrong.)

I would be astonished if the real San Francisco has ever appeared in SLIDERS outside of stock footage of the Golden Gate Bridge.

What's your beef with Firefox?

My issue is simply that it's gotten bloated and slow -- but I still like it in theory. And with all the extraneous features stripped out.

I have now completed 1/4 of the Quinn-Arturo scenes.

In other news, I've discovered a really great web browser -- Pale Moon. It's a variant on Firefox. I really like Firefox for all the great extensions and the way you can customize it. But Firefox has become a bloated mess of a browser. And even on i7 processors and 8GB of RAM, it's prone to delayed starts and regular freezing up compared to Chrome's instantaneous response. I recently discovered Pale Moon, which is a build of Firefox that's extremely stripped down and lightweight. It has all the features of Firefox, but none of the absurd demands on the CPU and processor. The main subtraction is compatibility with older-generation processors and operating systems. I've been settling for Chrome because Chrome is fast, but I think I might switch to Pale Moon.

I don't think it's a good idea.

I don't think Tom and Cory completely captured my opinion, which is this: you can have new actors play Quinn the boy genius, Arturo the bombastic man of wisdom, Wade the moral crusader and Rembrandt the outdated showbiz icon. But trying to have new actors imitate Jerry, John, Sabrina and Cleavant creates an awkward uncanny valley effect where all the audience will notice is how the imitation is either wildly off-the-mark or close but not-quite-right.

It's also a crappy situation for the actor. Instead of trying to capture the emotion, intensity and dynamic of a scene, they're trying to capture what some other actor might have done with the scene. It doesn't make for a good performance.

Even Robert Floyd, whose Jerry-impersonation is perfect, wasn't keen on imitating Jerry. He didn't think it was a good idea for him to play Quinn 1.0 and only Quinn 1.0. because he felt the audience would get tired of it and he would simply be copying another actor. His opinion was that it would be best if he could constantly shift between Quinn and Mallory. That way, imitating Jerry would just be one part of creating something new.

So, "The Prince of Slides." Cory and Tom seemed to enjoy this one aside from a few small plotholes (specifically, the Duke nearly getting killed at his cottage, then remaining at the cottage for anyone to find him). They liked a lot of the well-crafted characterization with George being revealed as a pawn rather than a villain. The alt-history with America as a post-Revolution monarchy was effective for them and they also liked the expanded alt-history in the deleted scenes. I enjoy "Prince of Slides" too -- it's a strong combination of the alt-history of Seasons 1 - 2 with the action-spectacle approach of Season 3. This is how the average Season 3 episode should have been; an engaging, enjoyable, professional product.

But there are little things that irk me. First of all, monarchies are bull$#!t. I'm not an American, but I find "Prince of Slides" to be treacherously unAmerican. To put it simply, you people living in America are capable of governing yourselves; you don't need kings to be selected for you by right of blood and birth (a.k.a. luck). If God chooses your rulers in this way, he's not much of a God. I'm not saying Americans do a great job of governing themselves; I'm just saying that of all the ways to organize your society and move towards greatness, monarchies are the dumbest way to do it, choosing leaders by family rather than by demonstrable ability.

So, to see the sliders defending kings and queens is pretty weird, although "Prince of Slides" makes it an internal revolution rather than a revolt from an oppressed population. What's troubling to me is that the sliders barely question or critique this absurd system of government, with Arturo actively supporting it as he laps up the luxuries of royal life. This is troubling when contrasted with "Prince of Wails" where Arturo was both supportive and critical of such power structures.

I also really took issue with Arturo creating a false identity for Quinn as a "fitness instructor." Holy S-word. We have really lost sight of who the hell this character is, haven't we? I think Arturo would have presented Quinn as the Duke's scientific advisor; you'd barely need to alter the dialogue for this.

I adored how Cory and Tom protested Arturo being presented as a Swiss-Army-Knife who walks like a man, noting that Arturo is now an expert on royal decorum and can perform C-sections. And I really liked their irritation towards another bizarre backstory for Rembrandt; his revelation that Danielle is the reason he calls himself the Cryin' Man is... I'm not saying it couldn't work, but "Prince of Slides" doesn't hit the mark. I'm not sure why, and I'll need to follow up later, but the story rings false to me and Cory and Tom found it over-the-top in trying to elevate the Danielle character's importance.

They also found it strange that Quinn wins the swordfights. Well, Jerry O'Connell is/was a championship-level fencer who'd won many competitions. Given Quinn's sports-obsession, I don't think it's impossible that he a fencer as well as a surfer / basketball player / baseball player / football player / waterboarder etc..

"The Prince of Slides" is pretty good, but, as stated, I have some concerns.

So, the "Desert Storm" podcast. Cory and Tom didn't like this episode much, nor do I. It's the spectacle-oriented version of SLIDERS but there is absolutely no energy, no drive, no excitement. The direction and editing of this episode are amateurish and incoherent, and the entire story is just a collection of setpieces pastiching the MAD MAX movies.

Ian McDuffie put it beautifully on his blog, noting that if people want to watch MAD MAX, they'll watch MAD MAX. They won't be interested in a cheap fan-film version that happens to feature the cast of SLIDERS. What's the point? The intense level of indifference within the production is disturbing; this is an episode where Arturo's illness is referred to as a *heart* condition when in "The Guardian," he was getting a BRAIN scan. God damn it.

And finally, "Desert Storm" is a scathing indictment of the LA production team on SLIDERS. A show so incompetent and incapable in its operation that it couldn't even avoid getting people killed. The stunt and safety standards on SLIDERS were so sloppy and lax as to be criminally negligent. Before "Desert Storm," there were constant visitors to the set; after "Desert Storm," production started locking down on visitors in an effort to cover up the circumstances Ken Steadman's death. SLIDERS in Season 3 was so bad that it KILLED someone.

And then we come to "Dragonslide." Oh, "Dragonslide." This is where I really gave up on SLIDERS. Tom and Cory didn't make too big a deal of it, clearly drained by "Electric Twister Acid Test" and "The Dream Masters" and "Desert Storm." But "Dragonslide" is the episode that flat out declares that magic exists in the SLIDERS mythos.

This is simply wrong. SLIDERS lends itself to many kinds of stories, sure. But the core of the show is founded on sliding as a scientific creation. A marvel of engineering. Much of sliding operates on how scientific principles are behind the wonders of the multiverse. And most SLIDERS stories, certainly the strong ones, operate on the sliders appreciating that the realities they visit operate on rules that can be understood and manipulated.

Tom and Cory took issue with the silliness. For me, the issue is abandoning any notion of rules. Within a work of fiction that operates on physics, mathematics, engineering and a loose sense of quantum mechanics, you can still have fantasy elements. You can have psychics and telepaths and present that a somewhat scientific concept from tapping the undiscovered abilities within the human mind. You can have monsters as the product of genetic engineering or cybernetic enhancement. It may be a stretch to call any of this science, but SLIDERS ultimately functions on the idea that the world(s) can be *understood* through reason and rationality.

But when you have people transforming into birds and magically taking over bodies and resurrecting and shapeshifting through spells, you've stepped into a level of arbitrary and, quite frankly, inexplicable fantasy. There is no reasoning or logic to how Quinn can come back to life or why killing Phillip Mallory would damn the villain. There's nothing for the sliders to investigate and understand. It's simply about manipulating meaningless symbols. Swords. Potions. Incantations. And SLIDERS simply isn't suited to this kind of storytelling.

When encountering psychics, the sliders learned the advantages and limits the psychics had and then formulated a plan. When encountering dragons and wizards, the sliders pick up magical objects. It doesn't call upon their intelligence, ingenuity, inventiveness or teamwork. "Dragonslide" also throws away any notion of world-building via an alternate outcome to a historical event. That sort of writing operates on applying logic, reason and extrapolation, and "Dragonslide"'s version of SLIDERS throws all that away in favour of magic.

Magic is a disservice to SLIDERS and its characters, and that's why "Dragonslide" is such an abomination despite being inoffensive as a piece of television.

Anyway. I laughed out loud when Tom and Cory balked at "Dragonslide"'s claim that the Rembrandt of the Pilot was getting ready to move in with Alicia Avo. That's just silly. The Rembrandt of Season 1 was clearly single and not desperate to return home to a lover from whom he'd been unwillingly parted.

"Dead Man Sliding" is a fun episode for me. Like "Double Cross," it merges an action-oriented version of SLIDERS with the Season 1/2 approach and the result is an engaging, visually captivating product. It's fun. The game show murder trial situation is delightfully off the wall. Jerry O'Connell's performance does a great job of distinguishing his double from the normal Quinn. Tom and Cory didn't seem to like Arturo, Wade and Rembrandt angsting about Quinn's situation, but I found the scene heartfelt.

Tom and Cory seemed to have a mixed reaction to Wade dressing up in club girl attire; on one level appreciating it, on another, having trouble connecting it to the mousey Wade of Season 1/2. I thought it worked; after two years, the sliders are used to putting themselves into different roles in order to survive. It's a very sudden jump, of course, but all TV in this era had massive character shifts between seasons to show maturity as episode-to-episode development was impossible.

At times, however, the LA production style causes problems. Perrey Reeves (Taryn the bounty hunter) doesn't convince as a warrior. She's a fine actress, but the costuming puts her in a ridiculous skintight vinyl outfit. The result is that we don't see a character who is a capable hunter of fugitive criminals; it's a Hollywood actress in a revealing outfit.

It also results in a weird visual situation where when Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Arturo and all the guest-stars look like stylish models and nobody looks normal, the overall sense of reality is diminished. The Vancouver episodes felt like a physical reality inhabited by all sorts; the LA episodes are creating a reality that's only inhabited by people from magazine covers. Tom and Cory seemed to have fun with this episode, and I did too -- although it would have been better if it had been filmed by the Season 2 team.

I've never seen "Electric Twister Acid Test," but I loved hearing Cory and Tom read message board posts about the fan who adored all the special effects and found them to be the perfect representation of SLIDERS at its best.

I'm not going to listen to the podcast now. I'll listen to it during my commute tomorrow. :-) Thank you, Cory.

As for DAWSON'S CREEK -- I dunno! I watched it when I was 18/19 and I was kind of a Puritanical jerk who totally agreed with the show's characters holding Jen in judgement for the apparently horrific sin of having sex. I wonder if, rewatching it today, I'd see it as the authorial voice or merely the judgments of flawed characters. Also, I enjoyed Seasons 1 - 2 a lot, but found that when Kevin Williamson left after that, he took all the humour, fun and wit out of the series. Season 3 was crass and ugly; Season 4 was bland and I never made it to Seasons 5 - 6. Loved the series finale that Kevin Williamson returned to write, though.

Anyway. Matt and I are in that situation that even the very best of friends will find themselves in -- where we must agree to disagree.

My absence was noted in the "Fire Within"/"Prince of Slides" podcast. I have been working on SLIDERS REBORN. Most of my energy for SLIDERS is going there. Had a pretty intense story conference last night, too. :-)

I am gathering my thoughts on recent podcasts, but rest assured, I think the Rewatch Podcast has been excellent.

Sorry to hear about the tech issues.

Continuing with thoughts on the "GF"/"Y&R" podcast -- I enjoyed Tom and Cory performing the 29.7 exposition scene that was cut from "Summer of Love." They did a fun job of playing the characters and Cory and Tom's impressions of Jerry, Cleavant and John are very funny.

However, this makes me more certain than ever that imitating the actors for a SLIDERS audioplay would be a very bad idea. I'm not saying it's impossible: Robert Floyd can imitate Jerry's voice well and Bob Joles made a career of copying John Rhys-Davies. But at the end of the day, I think a new actor playing these roles would be better off playing *Quinn* rather than imitating Jerry. If Rob found the time to perform dialogue for me, I wouldn't ask him to play Quinn the way Jerry O'Connell played him. I'd ask Robert Floyd to play Quinn the way Robert Floyd would play him. Same thing with Tom and his acting troupe.

David Peckinpah!

Sorry for not commenting on your recent podcasts -- when there was no in-thread post about a new podcast, I missed it!

The "Greatfellas" and "Young and Relentless" podcast was strong in discussion but frustrating for me. I don't know why, but the volume kept dropping randomly throughout the podcast. I'd turn up the volume to hear, only for the voice to be booming. Then I'd turn down the sound only to find the volume dropped so low I couldn't hear what Tom and Cory were saying. This was also present to a lesser extent in the "Double Cross" and "Rules of the Game" podcast.

Anyway. I thought it was hilarious that Tom and Cory were so disappointed by the Cleavant/Clinton doubling in "Greatfellas." I always thought it was very well-handled, but Tom and Cory found it obvious, glaring and easily noticeable when Clinton played Rembrandt-1 or Rembrandt-2. I also enjoyed Tom's fixation on Wade-2 in "Relentless." Neither episode is spectacular for me, but there's a lot of fun cast interaction and strong scenes. Tom and Cory noted that "Relentless" seems to have some serious logic and transition issues throughout: Quinn is inexplicably threatened by the unimposing Kyle, Quinn and Wade go from being captive to in control after a commercial break. Torme says the crew was tired during this time as it was the last episode of Season 2 to be filmed.

I enjoyed the talk, but it was *really* annoying at times when the audio would drop out. I'll talk about the next podcast soon. :-)

Rob, I'm going to have to ask you to make up your own mind on this one. :-) Come on, do you really want ME to be anyone's arbiter of taste?

And now, for another installment of whiny first-world problems.

I thought I'd try to make a go of it with my current hardware before buying a new laptop. Maybe see if I even really need one. My desktop is actually a 2009 laptop plugged into a monitor, keyboard and speakers. I haven't used it much for the last couple years because I was splitting my work between the tablet and mini-laptop (an 11.6 inch laptop, later replaced by the 10.1-incher that I ended up selling off). Today, I found the desktop a bit isolating and wanted to move around the apartment a bit, so I pulled the laptop loose from its makeshift dock and made it my new work machine.

And, well -- it's kind of lousy. I remember the HP DM3 being an aluminium marvel back in 2009 with a delightfully bright screen and eight hours of battery life. I guess LCD technology has improved a lot since 2009, because my crappy little 10.1 laptop had solid black levels and rich colours while this 13.3 HP DM3 laptop has washed out colours and the colour black is represented as a vague gray. The viewing angles on this thing are extremely limited. Netflix looks weird. And all the text on the screen looks so jagged and pixelated and ugly. I guess you don't notice such things until you've had better.

But that's fine! It's a work machine! As long as black text on white backgrounds stays readable, it's not a problem. Except -- my God, this machine is *noisy*. I guess in 2009, fan noise was part of the laptop landscape and when converted to a desktop, the actual laptop was under the desk and the noise was distant. But here I am, trying to write and the grinding, buzzing, noisy fan is a huge distraction. And the heat! The palmrest of this thing feels like a mini-space heater! The base of the laptop, resting on my calves/ankles, is like an electric blanket. And the spinning hard drive is so noisy! The awful T100, for all its faults, was silent; the spinning hard drive in the keyboard dock made no noise and the rest of the T100 had no moving parts and it never got hot.

The battery seems to last about 40 minutes.

I dunno. It's not great, but I am honestly asking myself if I really need better. I mean, the iPad mini screen looks great and I can use that for web browsing. I have a proper HDTV for movies and TV. I only need a laptop for typing long documents; this thing doesn't need to be a mobile multimedia machine. The T100 got on my last nerve after dust started getting under the glass and I sold it off in a fit of pique yesterday. The HP DM3 has yet to aggravate me to that degree. With a tablet and a home theatre PC in the living room, does a work machine need to any more than adequate? Dunno.

The $200 laptop was a final sale product, meaning no exchanges or refunds. While it came with an excellent manufacturer's accidental damage protection plan, I decided not to get it. I recently experienced a tech horror show with my Samsung Tab S 8.4 having a loose screen. I was able to exchange it again and again until deciding it was badly designed and getting a refund to spend on something else instead. I will never buy a computer I can't return within a trial period if it happens to be badly designed and manufactured. I think I'll save up for the Ultrabook and get by on my desktop for now.

I thought I had my T100TA in perfect condition now that Google Chrome is working -- but then dust started getting inside the monitor. That's right. Dust. This 10.1-inch laptop is so badly designed that DUST GETS UNDER THE GLASS. And the warranty has expired.

So, I'm going to sell this laptop off and buy a new one. God damn it. I have to wonder if my mistake has always been to go for low-cost, low-weight laptops, and this T100TA clearly had a lot of corners cut to make its low price point.
I'm prepared to spend more money on an ultrabook, but I find myself wondering if that's necessary. I always picked out laptops with the thought of carrying them around all day. But the truth is that with a smartphone and a tablet, a laptop can stay at home and I've never gotten much work down away from home on a laptop anyway. What work I did get done could have been achieved with a Bluetooth keyboard and Google Docs on the tablet or phone.

It looks like 15.6-inch-screen machines are the way to go now that mobility is less of a concern. Gosh. I wonder if they still have DVD drives in them.

It's unclear who's at fault, although there's plenty of blame to go around. It's hard to tell where things went wrong because even the most detailed accounts at this point are still offering generalities.

With FOX, they apparently cut three major action sequences, cut the budget by tens of millions and did so shortly before filming. After principal shooting was complete, FOX ordered reshoots. During these reshoots, Kate Mara had to wear an absurd wig because she'd cut her hair and she, Jamie Bell and Michael B. Jordan were barely available and Miles Teller only slightly more available, meaning reshoots were done with Miles Teller on a greenscreen and with doubles for the other two. Trank, at this point, was still on set but had no say in anything anymore. One aspect of the reshoots was to remove the idea that Dr. Doom was the online handle for "Victor Domeshev." The reshoots were done with a completely different sensibility from Trank's.

With Trank, the charges are that he went to set drunk and wasted regularly, completely unable to communicate with cast and crew at times. He refused to collaborate with others and put a black barrier around his monitor and set up a tent to keep everyone out. When there were problems, Trank would make himself unavailable. He was reportedly abusive towards Kate Mara and Miles Teller as well as to FOX representatives and producer Simon Kinberg. He also trashed the house that FOX was renting for him and defaced the owner's decorations. It was also reported that Trank gave bizarre direction to the actors, telling them when to blink and breathe. The only defence I've heard of this beyond a denial is that Trank was completely demoralized by FOX cutting his budget and set-pieces.

From FOX's end, they found that Trank's footage was unusable or unacceptable or incomplete -- not clear what the exact issue was. FOX's view was that reshooting the movie was unavoidable because the material Trank had either could not be assembled into a complete film -- or at least not a film they wanted to release, although it's pretty clear that this disowned-by-Trank version is also not a film they wanted to release. Until more information is available, we can only speculate whether the fault lies with FOX, Trank or both.

That said, Disney fired Trank from STAR WARS after hearing of his behaviour on FANTASTIC FOUR.

It's not just the origin of the F4 that are stuck in the 60s. It's the entire concept. Reed creating world-altering technologies all by himself within his own company as a one-man operation with no military oversight, no corporate sources of funding and no government involvement. Risky and perilous scientific expeditions carried out by a genius and three people with no scientific credentials at all, carrying out their work in public in the middle of New York City as celebrities.

It's somewhat believable -- not plausible, but believable -- in the less technologically advanced world of 1961 where even the concept of celebrity existed in a pre-social media era. This concept doesn't work in 2015. The comics get away with it because of the absurdities of a superhero universe. For a film, the entire concept of the FANTASTIC FOUR has to be reworked for a modern era and that changes the tone, the characters, the setting -- everything that makes the F4 a charming creation of 1961 extended into 2015 has to be reconsidered as a property beginning and continuing in 2015.

I really appreciate the kind words.

Part 2 has been delayed again. I finished the script. Mostly. There are a couple places where I put in __________ to add a plot device later and some scenes where I just wrote a brief summary because I was in a coffee shop and there was too much background noise to write dialogue. Unfortunately, I realized that there is a *massive* plot hole in the climax that explains what the hell is going on with Laurel and reality. The explanation raises a question for which I have no answer whatsoever. This problem didn't stand out to me when writing the outline; it is glaringly obvious when the characters are discussing it. I think I have a solution, but I need to go back and redraft scene after scene in the earlier pages. The script is not ready for Nigel to edit yet.

So, I think I am going to push the release back to September to give me time to rewrite the script and send it to Nigel to review it. Argghhhh.

I don't have the details. A part of me wants to see this as FOX's doing -- I mean, this is SLIDERS and X-MEN III and X-MEN ORIGINS WOLVERINE all over again -- studio interference done with no professionalism or concern for quality. Except it has to be said that this is something that happens with all big studio movies and TV shows. It happened on FRINGE with Jeff Pinkner and Joel Wyman; it happened on the X-MEN movies with Matthew Vaughn and Bryan Singer. And it happened on SLIDERS with Tracy Torme and F4 with Josh Trank.

Pinkner and Wyman and Vaughn and Singer and Whedon and Shane Black and others are people who seem to be able to work with the studio and handle all the mandates and restrictions while working hard for a good product. Trank, from these reports, got discouraged and just gave up, staggering onto set drunk because he was so unhappy with FOX and managed to lose not only F4, but the subsequent STAR WARS job he had lined up.

Nearly everyone Josh Trank worked with on F4 seems to be against him, suggesting that he was professionally dysfunctional across the board with every co-worker.

I wish Quinn would bring me a cure for the common cold and a double of Dan Harmon who would write my scripts for me.

*sneezes*

I don't know if skipping ahead on TORCHWOOD would help; I just know that Seasons 1 - 2 were largely panned for exactly the sort of thing you're pointing out, especially presenting a rapist as a heroic and moral figure. Season 2 was a mild improvement, but TORCHWOOD is fundamentally flawed. It claims that the organization is composed of professional elites, but they're all squabbling, immature morons who respond to every bad situation by making it worse. And the show presents these arguing, unfaithful, self-indulgent loons as characters in a 'mature' drama.

I do recall on a defunct message board a horde of posters screeching at me that the writer didn't intend for it to be rape, so I shouldn't refer to it as such. CHILDREN OF EARTH and MIRACLE DAY are well-liked, but that rapist character was turned into a zombie and then killed off after Season 2, if that's any help. Personally, I am steering clear of TORCHWOOD and any show that presents self-indulgent gratification as maturity.

I find GOTHAM visually cartoonish but very dark -- and the mismatch doesn't grab me. If it's your thing, enjoy! :-) I lost interest halfway into the series. That said, I never gave up on AGENTS OF SHIELD, so it just means my tolerance is in different areas.

I don't think SMALLVILLE made Allison Mack unhappy,  but it also wasn't making her happy -- and that, psychologically, can be a serious issue if a job like SMALLVILLE was essentially the main goal of her career. I think nine seasons on a TV show like that should have been enough for Allison to pretty much retire, so it wasn't a money or a business issue. I would describe Allison as an elegant hippie spiritualist.

In contrast, I think if Allison had played, say, Veronica Mars for nine years, she would have been very happy.

Whoa, really? When did Marina play Donna Troy? Was this an episode of WONDER WOMAN or one of the DC Animated Features?

And now for something completely different --

http://www.livingthedreamshow.com/allison-mack/

Allison Mack guested on Phil Morris' talk show (Phil played the Martian Manhunter on SMALLVILLE, among other things). It's an incredibly boring interview; Mack is, for whatever reason, extremely subdued and low-key throughout. But she said one really interesting thing. She said that she experienced a mid-life crisis during SMALLVILLE around -- judging by the numbers she was throwing out -- Season 7. She talked about how from age 4, her whole life had been acting. She was super-ambitions, grabbing every part she could. Her holy grail was to find a successful TV role that would go on indefinitely.

She got cast on SMALLVILLE. A regular role. The show kept getting renewed. Financially and professionally, Allison Mack was a success story. Internally, she felt completely blank and lost and utterly unfulfilled. Her work was hollow and meaningless and she felt detached from what she was doing and her life seemed composed of empty material achievements. She eventually found herself when she started focusing on theatre and stageplays and she realized that she wasn't happy reading other people's words; she wanted to create her own. It's a fairly dull podcast, to be blunt, but Mack drops these snippets here and there while being incredibly guarded and withdrawn -- and so now I'm going to engage in theoretical armchair psychology.

I think Mack was delighted to find success on SMALLVILLE, but as seasons passed, she realized that Chloe Sullivan was a completely irrelevant character. SMALLVILLE, for better or worse, was about Clark, Lex and Lana. Chloe was totally unnecessary as far as the show was concerned. She was a regular character who had about as much material as a guest-star; she was scripted like an extra. Because the cast and crew and creators liked her, as they did John Glover, they kept her around even though they really didn't know what to do with her.

In the clumsy teen soap of SMALLVILLE, Chloe was Clark's secondary love interest. And the creators had no intention of ever advancing that, so Chloe was trapped as Clark's secondary love interest, perpetually weepy and whiny and her character contorted into bizarre shapes like her nonsensical healing powers. When Lois Lane was introduced, Chloe's journalistic skills became even more surplus to requirements. The material for Chloe was ghastly ghastly ghastly from Seasons 2 - 7. Allison probably thought about quitting, but she didn't -- as she says in the podcast, a long-running regular role on a successful show was everything an actor could want. Financially, it would be insane to walk away from a job most people never, ever, ever get to have.

So she took the money and did her job. Allison Mack's acting was always superb no matter how bad the material. She was a professional and she did a professional's job and Allison Mack is always incandescent onscreen even when the role is beneath her. But the result was that Mack became emotionally distant from Chloe and SMALLVILLE. It became a job. A job she did for money. A job she excelled at, but just a job. A chore.

And by the time Season 8 made her the female lead of the show, it was too late. Allison Mack cared about doing a good job, she cared about the fans, but she didn't care about *Chloe.* How could she? The writers didn't. Mack was offered a truckload of money and increased screentime for a two-year extension on her contract that took her through to Season 9 and she accepted. But after Seasons 2 - 7, Mack was beginning to wear out.

The vast improvement of Seasons 8 - 9 just came too late. SMALLVILLE and its fans were, to Allison Mack, a professional commitment. But not a personal one. SMALLVILLE was simply a job now. Had been for years. By the end of Season 9, I think Allison Mack was *completely* burnt out on acting professionally without any kind of personal investment.

She quit the show. She desperately needed a break. But, again, professionalism: she signed to do a small number of episodes so as to avoid abandoning the series. And she made sure to be free for the series finale.

SMALLVILLE's tenth season floundered badly. And while Mack's absence doesn't explain all of it, the sad truth is that even a detached and emotionally distanced Allison Mack is still a brilliant actress. Without Allison Mack, SMALLVILLE lost its very best performer who endeared herself to the audience. As charming as Lois and Clark were by Season 10, it just wasn't as compelling without Chloe and Mack's screen presence. If Chloe had been written in Seasons 2 - 7 as well as she'd been written in Seasons 8 - 9, maybe Mack would have felt differently.

Make no mistake, this is total theoretical armchair psychology from a boring podcast. Don't take it seriously.

SLIDERS REBORN may be delayed by another couple weeks. The reason: Nigel Mitchell, possibly the best SLIDERS writer ever, E-mailed me yesterday saying he has some more alt-history material to send my way. This, for me, is the equivalent of Tracy Torme and Robert K. Weiss knocking on my door to say they want to help me write my story. Naturally, I'll make time for them -- after Nigel's had his say.

I am nearly done the first draft of SLIDERS REBORN Part 2. I am going to spend the weekend punching up the scenes for a July 30 release -- but if Nigel's feedback requires more time to implement, then I will take that time.

That's all for now on this subject except to say that Maggie is in Part 2 of SLIDERS REBORN. :-)

**

I enjoyed your Tumblr posts on SLIDERS. It's weird to realize that SLIDERS pre-dated the multimedia-capable approach that modern fandom has with GIFs and fanvids and fan-films and manipulated images. SLIDERS is so old that you can't even find decent resolution photos of the cast in their 90s clothes and hairstyles.

I can assure you that every detail of my account of Kari Wuhrer's post SLIDERS career is true, right down to the breast implant encapsulation and getting fired from a soap opera for getting pregnant. Kari's plastic surgery nightmare was the feature of many articles including one she wrote herself. The pregnancy-firing was another public affair; there was a nasty lawsuit that followed. You can easily find confirmation of these biographical details via Google.

It's entirely possible that Staples was selling me open box items (at the same price as the sealed box items). Staples does not reduce the price of open box sales. Maybe they were returned for a reason. They did not have any unopened Tab S 8.4s in stock -- the whole city seemed to be out. And by then, I was so soured on the whole Samsung tablet experience that I went crawling back to Apple.

So, downloaded the HEROES REBORN app and it's kind of crappy. The 'files' on each character are, instead, a series of clips from Seasons 1- 4. It's acceptable but rather artless and unengaging. Wikia does a better job. There are webisodes, but they're awkwardly played off YouTube (with ads before the actual video plays). The first webisode of DARK MATTERS, however, is intriguing. It's shot like a vlog and features a new character discovering her power. It really captures the wonder and joy of Season 1 and the down-to-earth sense of ordinary people experiencing the extraordinary. You don't need the app to watch it, however.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV-dcDqmzkc

Skip the app, check out the web series.