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Actually, I think that Gotham is in the united multiverse (as well as the old Flash series, and just about every other DC series/movie). There is a catch though... while it's certainly possible that Gotham is happening at the same time as The Flash, in a different universe, it is also possible that Gotham takes place in the past. So it's not just another universe, but another time.

It's worth noting that both Earth-2 (on The Flash) and Gotham use heavy retro themes. It's even possible that Gotham takes place on Earth-2, but in the past.

I disagree with you about the DC plan versus the Marvel plan. Marvel sacrificed a number of it's phase 1 movies, just to set up The Avengers. Thor, Captain America, and to some degree, Iron Man 2 were all prequels to The Avengers and their own plots were secondary.

Whatever happens in Batman v. Superman, DC still has a list of movies that could do just fine on their own. BvS doesn't tell us anything about how Suicide Squad, Wonder Woman, Aquaman or Cyborg will turn out. Those movies aren't dependent on this one. This one isn't dependent on them. I actually think that's smarter than the Marvel plan.

The movie looks really good, don't get me wrong, but the advertising is definitely skewing this toward being more of a Batman movie than a Superman movie. Is Superman a POV character, or just something that Batman is facing?

The thing that annoys me is, people complained that Man of Steel wasn't "Superman". I agree with Snyder when he says that this is Superman, just not the Superman from the familiar movies. I saw optimism and hope in Man of Steel. I'm on board with this Superman. The problem is, the trailers are all playing into that image of Superman that people were complaining about. Broody, and angry and too willing to sacrifice people. And I'm fine with this being Batman's point of view in the movie (for a while), but they needed to counter that vibe with Superman's side of things. Superman shouldn't be a side character in this movie, he should be an equal. I have little doubt that the movie will do him justice, but the trailers have been hitting the Batman side a little too hard. It even has me wanting to see Superman in a daylight scene.

Another good episode this week. Then I saw the preview for next week, with Castiel and Crowley, and I had to just sigh. The show is so good when they're not in it!

Now on a completely unrelated note... I was thinking about the future of the show. Jeremy Carver is working on another project, so I started wondering what would happen next, if someone else took over (there is no sign that he won't be there, but I was just wondering anyway). It could be cool to have a fresh take and a new direction, if it was the right direction (I wasn't a fan of Sera Gamble's two seasons as showrunner).

Anyway, this let to me wondering what I would do if I were chosen to run the show. And I decided that I would implement my plan to scale it way back, and make it way more personal and human-based. For starters, I would get rid of Crowley and Castiel. I would do this by introducing a new hunter, who takes on the task of closing the gate to Hell, which Sam never finished. Crowley would be banished for good.

Castiel... I don't know. But he would be cut back on and only appear for special events.

Then, the main arc/villain. My idea is to use John Winchester (or if he wasn't available for a whole season, maybe Jo Harvelle). In the season premiere, Sam and Dean are fighting some normal monster. For once, they don't have a huge apocalyptic event to handle and things look relatively calm. They're actually comfortable.
At the end of the episode, John Winchester walks into a diner. He is disoriented. Something isn't right with him.

As the season goes on, we see John exploring a little. He discovers that Bobby, Ellen, Jo and a number of other hunters that he knows are dead. Most of them, in fact. This disturbs him quite a bit, as you can imagine.

He calls Sam's phone, but when Sam answers and hear's John's voice, he reacts as you might expect him to. John ends the call, not knowing what is going on. So, he decides to track down his boys and figure out what's happening.

When he first sees Sam and Dean, they think he is a monster or a ghost. They eventually come around to believing that he is for real, but he's acting strange. When they tell him what's happened since he died, John loses it. Especially when he hears that Adam is also dead. This is wrong. This isn't the way things were supposed to turn out.

Sam and Dean tell him that they did their best, but they're struggling to keep their heads above water. They were alone.

To this, John responds that no, they weren't. At least, they weren't supposed to be. They were supposed to have a whole group of people helping them. Their hunter family. But something has changed. He didn't make the deal with Yellow-Eyes to save Dean. He didn't die. Bobby didn't die. Ellen and Jo never died. He is a little hesitant to tell Sam and Dean exactly what happened to them, but he does tell them that he was there when Sam discovered that his entire life had been manipulated. He was there when the angel was was being organized. He's been there this whole time.

At some point, John went back in time, because he needed to fix things. He needed to make them right. But in doing so, he unraveled everything. This timeline isn't supposed to exist. He needs to find a way to set things right, but he doesn't know how.

Now, at first, this sounds great. Sam and Dean are a little unsure, but if John is telling the truth, they could get back all of the people that they've lost, and all it would cost them was years of bad decisions and suffering.

But, John isn't being entirely open with them. He won't tell them exactly what did happen to them in his timeline. Eventually, we learn that he really never made the deal to save Dean. Dean died after the first season finale... But, of course, that couldn't stick. The angels brought Dean back a few months later, but isolated him. He said yes to Michael before Lucifer ever got out of the cage.

While Sam was toyed with and pressured, and was still manipulated by Ruby and drank the demon blood and all of that, John stopped him before Lucifer was released. The apocalypse was averted, and the only real casualty of that battle was Dean, who was worn by Michael until his body was eventually destroyed. That was what John was going back for. He saved Dean, but got everyone else killed in the process.

So, this is the arc for the season. How can they set things right? But if they do, Dean dies, right? Dean is willing, but Sam isn't as eager. He's not even sure that they can trust John. How do they know that any of it is for real? How do they know that they won't just be giving Lucifer another shot at the apocalypse if they change things? The only reality they know is this one.

John isn't necessarily villain, but what he is doing is going to at least get Dean killed. More than that, it could end up changing the outcome of the apocalypse. John is sure of his goal, but Sam and Dean aren't. Do they stop him, or help him?

And if things are changed, what would the season after that look like?

Also to be fair, the two cities are 600 miles away from each other. It probably makes less sense for Team Flash to call Oliver than it would make for Team Arrow to call Barry.

You know what has always bugged me about The Flash and Superman?  They rarely point out that when Barry is running 600 miles, he still has to run those 600 miles the same way that any of us would. The world slows down around him, but he still has to take each step and run each mile. That is why I would much rather be able to fly than run at super speeds.
I remember one comic where (I think it was) Wally West was thrown off of a bridge, and to him the fall took forever. He was helpless in the situation, but time was still slow around him and all he could do was fall for what would have been like hours to him.

I think that they do mention each other often enough to make it clear that they're in each other's circle, and if they don't specifically mention them in each episode, it can be assumed that they've spoken. We haven't gotten Team Flash's reaction to Felicity being injured, for example. But I'm sure they've been in touch. And they're always introducing costume updates from Cisco on Arrow... at some point, it becomes repetitive and kinda wastes time to say "I tried to call Oliver, but he was dealing with problems of his own"

As for Roy... I don't know. On one level, I'd like to see him bouncing between shows as needed. On the other hand, he really can't. He's supposed to be dead, so if he shows up again, he is putting himself and Oliver in danger. They could change his costume, but it's still a risk.

Really? It doesn't look as good as The Flash to me. And if I were in charge of the show, I would pretty much tear it down and start from scratch. It is a horrible Superman ripoff and they completely failed to make Kara her own character with a unique perspective and purpose. I want the show to be good, but everything is wrong with the show! Everything!

I can understand that Arrow isn't supposed to exist in a realistic world. But the thing is, even when you create a world of your own, you have to create the reality of that world. There have to be rules and limitations. If Felicity's injury doesn't make her skip a beat, she might as well be rolling around in her desk chair without an injury at all. If Oliver can walk away from a sword through the chest and a drop off of a cliff, why doesn't he just close his eyes and teleport himself around town?
Arrow has violated its own reality so many times, and usually just because the writers want to take a shortcut through the story. None of it means anything anymore. Some things had to happen, like introducing meta-humans when they weren't supposed to exist on this show. I can understand that. But so much of it was completely unnecessary, and cheap.

As for Supergirl... never mind. I don't need to go there again.

My Kindle Scout campaign has been getting pretty slow, so I'm trying to get some nominations this weekend... Given my lack of reach on social media, it's not an easy task. We'll see! I hear that nominations aren't everything, so even if I'm not on the Hot and Trending list, I could still stand a chance.

But it's be really nice to make the list at least a little bit! Argh.

I go through the same thing, where I think of cool story ideas and they're suddenly showing up on my TV shows. I don't know if it's just a coincidence and I only notice them after I think I'm super original with my ideas, or if I'm just TV psychic.

Comic books do this too. They hand off writers for specific arcs pretty regularly.

Actually, Arrow could benefit from this right now. I get the feeling that the writers working on that show would rather be doing The Flash or Legends. At least, that's what I feel when I watch the show.

"Don't You Forget About Me" was a great episode. People on Twitter are already calling for a Wayward Daughters spinoff, and I think that it could actually work. Maybe add Eileen from last week's episode.

But then again, maybe it would be best to just keep these women on Supernatural for now. The dinner scene was really interesting to me, because it actually felt like a family dinner. i was surprised by how much Sam and Dean belonged there, and it wasn't a fake or forced relationship (like with Charlie). It was all completely honest. I would much rather see that group together on the show than more Castiel or Crowley. Maybe add Cole back into the mix (don't kill his family though. it's been done already)

"Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster" was definitely the best of the revival so far, and it was actually a stand-out episode for the entire series as a whole. It was a fun episode that could stand on its own, but it also had a ton of easter eggs for the fans of the show. This was when it really felt like Mulder and Scully were back for me. I was smiling as soon as I saw Stoner and Chick in the teaser, and I didn't stop until after the episode was finished (actually, I watched Galavant afterward, so it took a while to stop smiling)

I don't think that the immortal thing was ever supposed to be as huge of a deal as it's become, but I like that the writers are embracing it for what it is at this point. The question is, will they go for the twist and have Scully sacrifice herself at some point?

I always thought that was cool. I just watched "Tithonus" and was wondering what would happen if the photographer was thrown in a wood chipper or something. The time loop explains that. I wonder if that means it's safe for Scully to remove the second implanted chip that cured her cancer.

She has continued to age though, which makes her different than the photographer. Is it possible that she passed it on to someone else already?

In the new episodes, William is a recurring theme for Scully and Mulder. It's understandable that she is still sad about the son who is still out there, and she is missing his life. But it has seemed weird to me that she never mentioned Emily. Both times she had a chance at a child, it was taken from her. She used to look at pictures of Emily, the same way she looked at the picture of William in her desk. I just wonder if she still feels that loss.

That reminds me of another comment that I hated... Mulder made a snarky comment about the bullet-proof windows, saying that the Tad guy must be scared of all of the gun toting liberals that want to shoot him up.

It implied that most of the shooters that we see in the news are conservative, pro-gun types. As a profiler, he should know better. A large number of them lean socialist, though their political ramblings aren't always widely reported. But it really has more to do with being crazy than their politics.

The attack just down the street from me was targeting a group that was largely conservative. The shooters weren't crazed liberals, they were Muslim extremists... Which is another recurring theme in many of the shootings.

I'm not trying to be super political, but it is just lazy writing. Chris Carter needs to be careful when he is having someone like Mulder say something like that. Just like he has to be careful when Scully gets medical.

That could have been cool.

I just can't get over the politics angle. It irks me. Mulder, by his nature, cannot be a hardcore liberal who is highly critical of anyone who believes in the 2nd Amendment. He has to distrust the government. He has to believe that people have the right protect themselves. Was he supposed to be a hypocrite in the episode? Was it supposed to be a sign that he was falling for the narrative?

I've been going back and forth in my head, trying to decide which one of them should be a conservative and which one should be a liberal (since they should be on opposite sides. it's their nature). Scully is Catholic, from a military family. There is good reason for her to be more conservative... but then again, she turned her back on a lot of that upbringing, only returning to the church after her cancer scare. So, a lot of her core beliefs could be in contrast to that upbringing.
Mulder was raised by a man who was obviously a big government type. He's not religious. His personality tends to lean toward "do what you want"... but then, he bucks the system at every turn. Like Scully, a lot of who he is runs counter to his upbringing.

I haven't settled on Scully yet, but Mulder seems like a libertarian to me. After everything he's been through, he should be all about the government getting out of the way, and he should be all about the people having more control over their own lives. I don't understand the decision to make him more liberal (aside from Carter being liberal and wanting his characters to echo that).
Even if he were libertarian, I would still disagree with Mulder on a lot of things, but at least the character would make more sense.

I think that is going to be a misdirect. He may become a version of Zoom later, but I think Barry's father is Zoom. Just my own guess, not based on spoilers.

It will be interesting to see what happens. I like that they're not afraid to take the characters and stories to some dark places. Any show about Gotham needs that. I guess it's TV, so things can eventually just fade into the past. But it is still a pretty big moment.

My question is: With this new mythology that is all about splicing human DNA with alien DNA and all of that, are they going to tell us that all of the X-Files were alien related? Was lightning kid another genetic experiment? The witch girls? The Texas vampires?

After being called a "hater" a bunch of times because I post thoughts and opinions about TV shows and movies online, I've started thinking about starting a blog. This would be an old school geek blog, where people can post long rants and get into debates about these shows/movies, without those that I now call "pop geeks" whining about how we should all just love everything or stop watching.

But I suck at blogging. Maybe I could put together a team of people who like to rant about this stuff, so the blog wouldn't sit without an update for months at a time.

I just miss the days when you could be a geek without being attacked by those people who aren't really geeks, but think it's "totes coolsies" to be a geek now. Y'know, the people who go fangirl over Olicity, but have a mental breakdown if you try to discuss the comic books on which the show is based.

I want geekdom to be considered lame again!

I'm all for leaving open the possibility of changing directions later. However, if you start the season with a flash forward to a grave like that, you'd better know what your plan is. I don't think the Arrow writers had the slightest idea of who it was when they started, and that annoys me. I believe that they know who Zoom is (because I think I know who is playing him, just looking at the eyes). I just don't get how you can start an arc-based series without knowing the plan. It drives me insane.

With some shows, there are a lot of stand-alone episodes. So the big plan doesn't need to be super detailed for those shows. But Arrow has cut out most of the stand-alone episodes with one-off villains. They got more into serializing the story, yet they don't have a map.

Like I said, I'm all for letting inspiration strike. But that isn't the same thing as not having a plan.

Wow. You put it all out there in a really nice way. Good job on that.

Season 5 of the show was pretty interesting. Mulder comes to believe that everything he has been led to believe was a lie. There were no aliens. It was all a government conspiracy. This felt like a natural conclusion to that story, and it should have ended there. But it didn't. They went on to disprove that idea in pretty definite terms.

The miniseries appears to be trying to go back to that concept, more or less. But it only serves to further muddy the waters. The question is, would the reboot have been better off just shrugging off the alien arc and moving on without making it the focus of the first episode? Mulder has come to realize that it's all been a lie. 2012 came and went, and nothing happened. So much of his life has been wasted that he ends up the depressed mess that we meet in "My Struggle". Did they need to do a whole episode about that? Or would it have been better to keep it vague?

I have issues with "My Struggle". Before I go into them, I want to make it clear that I was excited to go into this miniseries. I still hold onto excitement about the middle three non-Carter episodes. I've been rewatching the series and just got into season 6... I think the move to LA destroyed the vibe of the series, but that's a different conversation.

So I'm a fan. Since day 1. I'm not what the kids today call a "hater" who just enjoys hating things for no reason. I'm an old school geek who still hangs out on a bboard for a series where most of the fandom will agree the show mostly sucked. My kind of geek rants with the best of intention. So, here we go...

Chris Carter can't write to save his life. Like Joss Whedon these days, you feel the writer in the room when you're watching his stuff, because it seems to be mostly about him and not the story or the characters. I "My Struggle", Carter welcomed back the fans after 13 years away by kicking half of them in the teeth. He did this by jumping into politics right away, making snide comments at the expense of a large part of the fandom.

The concept of "My Struggle" in itself isn't too bad. Even my own new novel series deals with a big conspiracy against the people. I don't mind politics in general. However, Carter fails to understand the topics that he is discussing. So, he ends up attributing ideals to the wrong sides. If you're going to get political, you need to know what you're talking about. If you're just in it to make stupid, juvenile comments about the side you disagree with, you will not win fans. Carter also did this in "I Want to Believe" with a truly out of place pan over to a picture of George W. Bush while the X-Files theme played.

In the 1990's, Carter usually kept real world politics out of it. There were references here and there, but he made no attempt to get into the deep stuff. Clinton was in office and Carter is a liberal, so he kept his massive government conspiracy largely non-political. And in rewatching the show, it's obvious that that method worked. It actually made the show more timeless.

Now, Carter is trying to get into real world politics that are over his head. He makes vague, general comments about something in an attempt to sew together a patchwork quilt of conspiracy, but he ignores the meat of those issues. The quilt is made out of Kleenex and will fall apart as soon as you pick it up.

One of the stranger elements of the reveal of this conspiracy was that they completely ignored the man in the White House. Yeah, Obama appeared during a lighthearted clip at the beginning. However, during the monologue of evil, they showed clips of George W. Bush more than once... All while talking about a lot of stuff that either all happened under Obama, or which were expanded under him. Obama has been President for almost 8 years and they're still showing images of Bush... it's the same mentality that kept politics out of the show in the 90's, but with the added weird twist of blame shifting to a guy who hasn't been in charge for almost a decade.

I'm also not sure that I'm comfortable with shifting the blame for 9/11 off of the people who really did it. I know that the show has always played with historical events this way, but it seems like it might be in poor taste, especially when the same people are still killing people to this day.

So... the fabric of the new mythology is flimsy.

The first scene with Mulder and Scully was awkward. Not in the way it was supposed to be, but in a way that made it feel like the editing was off and we were seeing responses to comments that were edited out. Likewise, I didn't like their argument on the porch. Both were yelling and going nuts, but neither one of them was actually saying anything. If either one of them just said what they were thinking, it would have turned into a conversation rather than a fight. The show used to do this well, having the characters go back and forth. Unfortunately, I don't think that Carter even knew what they were arguing about, so they were just aimlessly yelling.

The conservative host guy could have been so much richer as a character if they thought of him in the same way that they thought of the Lone Gunmen. But again, they didn't seem to have a firm grasp of the character or his views. Do they like him or is he part of the problem? He came across as a caricature.

I've recently had experience with trying to write characters who don't think the way I do or believe what I do. It's hard, but you have to at least make an effort.

Ultimately, "My Struggle" was a struggle to get through (see what I did there?). That said, I am still hopeful that the other episodes will be solid X-Files fun. At the very least, three of them should be good... I hope.

The Kindle Scout campaign is live! I have a month to get as many people to nominate my book as possible!

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1QEAR2INNBCFT

It is set in the future, but I think it uses a lot of Sliders type storytelling. It is basically a giant "what if?" story.

It should be interesting to see.

I am completely unfamiliar with the character. The movie looks fun enough, but I also started to get annoyed with his voice by the end of the trailer.

Anyone watch the DC special that aired on the CW a couple of days ago?

Batman v Superman still looks cool. I think too many people are basing their opinions on early rumors or fan desires rather than what we have actually seen. The criticism that the movie is too dark and depressing makes no sense, since we haven't seen the movie. The ad campaign has clearly been leaning toward Batman, which is a mistake in my opinion. They should have had an equal Superman push, that was a bit brighter and more colorful.

Wonder Woman actually looks interesting! Go figure. She is usually so bland.

The Suicide Squad looks better with each new trailer. The whole thing looks pretty awesome, but Harley steals the show. They could have given her a movie of her own. Maybe they still can.

Anyway, if you haven't seen the new trailer:

https://youtu.be/CmRih_VtVAs

I have been out of the loop for so long! For the past couple of months, things have been insane. First, Christmas. After that, I've been scrambling to prepare the Kindle Scout submission for my new book. I've submitted it. With luck, I will be able to post a link within the next couple of days.

Gulp.

Anyway, sorry for my lack of replies lately. I haven't ditched the Sliders community!

Welcome back, Stuslide. Always nice to see a familiar name return.

Okay, I've been working on it. Going to send you some private messages now.

Can you send me one of the scripts in script format? I'd like to see if some of my Kindle publishing brains could work out that problem.

I usually convert to mobi rather than epub, but the tools that I use might be able to do both.

I was completely unimpressed with the midseason finale. It was more of the shtick they played last year where they killed Oliver and threw him off of a cliff just for thrills, and then completely ignored the magnitude of that event in the following episodes. If anything, we can now say that Felicity is the most safe character on the show.

The gas chamber killed one guy in a few seconds, but all of the main characters were apparently immune to the gas. They got a scratchy throat and coughed, but they were in there for a while and nothing major happened.

Felicity found the ring and then pretty much forced Oliver to propose. I just find myself hating her more and more. It's a death spiral now. I don't think that I could ever go back to liking her, even if they reverted to the good old days of the Felicity character. She is just so selfish and arrogant and whiny.

The Flash had a pretty good winter finale, but I'm still not sure about bringing Wally in at this point. The bomb magnet idea was silly, but then I remembered Felicity's gun magnets and the bomb magnets suddenly seemed far less stupid.

Is that a good thing?

My brother installed a custom rom, and his screen went black whenever the phone was active. Something with the proximity sensor. There was no way to answer or end calls. I think he worked something out though.

I'm thinking that I might enter this first book of my series into the Kindle Scout program. If I do and it gets enough votes, I could end up being published by Amazon, which would get me some money right out of the gate and hopefully some more promotion as well. But the question is, could I get enough votes? I guess we'll see. If not, I just publish like I normally do.