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I'm not sure. The Arkhamverse was, at least until the SUICIDE SQUAD game, a Batman-centric universe in the same way the Nolan trilogy was a Batman-centric universe.

Slider_Quinn21 seized on something else: when you play ARKHAM ASYLUM, ARKHAM CITY, ARKHAM ORIGINS, and ARKHAM KNIGHT, you are playing as Batman. You are Batman. Which means SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE shooting Batman in the head was shooting you in the head.

... why would a video game studio license DC superheroes to make a game where you kill the DC superheroes?

Surely League fans would want to play as the League, not fight against them. Making KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE was like making a SLIDERS game where you play as Colonel Rickman trying to hunt victims and evade the sliders.

My purely speculative speculation is that Rocksteady paid a sizable fee for the license to use the Justice League and a more modest fee to use the Suicide Squad, thinking they could do something with these properties to build on the success of the ARKHAM series... only to realize they'd made a mistake.

Mark Millar once remarked that a JUSTICE LEAGUE movie was a great way to lose $200 million, and that was before Snyder made it and Whedon reshot it. (I read that the movie lost $60 million.) Millar pointed out: the Justice League's powers meant the effects budget for each character alone could be like a movie unto itself.

I suspect a Justice League game is also difficult. Superman and Wonder Woman would quickly hit the limits of an ARKHAM-style open world. The Flash would require a very intricate and difficult level of gameplay design. I don't know how a game developer in the present day could design any sort of control for the player to create Green Lantern light constructs.

I wonder if the game developers soon realized it was beyond their technology and ability to make a Justice League game. But they had to do something with the license to recoup their cost. They made a third person shooter and made the Justice League the targets.

Hopefully, the DLC content will bring Batman back to life and offer a more graceful story for the lead character of the Arkhamverse. There are already rumours that the DLC sequels for the SUICIDE SQUAD game will be resurrecting the Justice League.

I don't know very much of anything about the ARKHAM ASYLUM games or the latest SUICIDE SQUAD game. I am not a gamer and I have many PS3 games in my closet that have never been loaded. However, I know that the ARKHAM series means a lot to you and I am sorry that it has disappointed you.

I did look over a plot summary of SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE. It is peculiar to me that the developers, Rocksteady, has made so many Batman games in their own video game continuity, the Arkhamverse, a Batman video game universe in which Batman is the lead character, only to then treat the character like a supporting player who is then killed off.

One would think that such a story could be presented in a Suicide Squad-centered continuity rather than the main Arkhamverse continuity. It is also strange to me that a licensor would make a game where the player kills the heroes, although I am hardly the final arbiter of taste.

I would note that the director of the original ARKHAM ASYLUM game, Sefton Hill, is credited as director on SUICIDE SQUAD: KILL THE JUSTICE LEAGUE but in fact left Rocksteady in December 2022 and the game was reportedly completed by others. I don't know enough about this to offer any real assessment, but it is always difficult when a creator comes up with ideas that are unconventional and but then other people without the some unconventionality are the ones to execute them.

Demoting Batman and killing him off is a choice where maybe the person who came up with the idea needs to be the one to shepherd it to completion. Maybe Hill would have carried it out more satisfyingly and compellingly. It seems like what's most upsetting to fans: this was reportedly Kevin Conroy's final performance as Batman in the games before he died. Conroy was a definitive Batman, and complaints declare that his final appearance didn't capture the appeal and enjoyment of his Batman but was instead insulting towards him.

It looks like the game will have a sequel, an additional year's worth of gameplay in downloadable content. It's entirely possible that Batman's death in the game is a temporary situation. Batman has died in the comics at least 10 times only to return via magic or time travel or Fourth World technology or voodoo or whatnot. However, even if the Arkhamverse Batman returns, Kevin Conroy (probably) won't.

I do not know enough about these video games to say whether or not Batman's death should be taken seriously; in comics, Batman's death is at most an extended coffee break.

I do not know enough about these games to say whether or not it would be upsetting if the resurrected Arkhamverse Batman were voiced by Roger Craig Smith (I read that Smith voiced the younger Arkhamverse Batman in ARKHAM ORIGINS while Conroy voiced the present day version in the other games).

DC has had some curious attitudes to licensing Batman over the years. I understand why a studio would think Zack Snyder and Batman are a great match, but then there was Batman's deeply unflattering portrayal in TITANS. That bizarre presentation of Batman as a mentally fragile figure was also crippled by Warner Bros. refusing to let Batman wear the Batsuit in the show. Batman is absent in BATWOMAN and GOTHAM KNIGHTS, but his absences make him seem either incompetent or uncaring (intentionally or not).

What's behind this? Well, to me, the whole DARK KNIGHT RETURNS storyline is one of the most abrasively insulting Batman stories ever written, and yet, it's viewed as character-defining by most Batman fans and most of DC. Maybe the Warner Bros. licensing office sees downbeat cynicism as on brand for Batman.

I would prefer that the caretakers of Batman insist that Batman be a heroic figure who, even if he is to be killed off, is given a death scene that reflects what makes Batman an iconic and powerful character. Something like flying a nuclear bomb away from the city or stopping the embodiment of evil or dying in bed after solving 15 murder mysteries based on nothing but casefiles and with his dying words bequeathing his favourite quick Bat-Disguise Kit to Alfred, his favourite Bat-Glider to Dick, his favourite Bat-Decrypter to Barbara, his favourite Batarang to Jason, his favourite Bat-Sonar Lenses to Cassandra, his favourite Bat Signal Jammer to Stephanie, his favourite Bat-Claw to Kate, and all the Bat-Computers to Tim.

There is one Batman death story that I really like but still find questionable: LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH. Spoiler warning: it features Bruce Wayne waking up to find that Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by a supervillain named Omega who killed all the other heroes and villains. Bruce is baffled by how he has no memory of how the world came to be in this state and in addition, he notices that even though he should be in his 70s given the span of time, he is somehow in his early 30s. Bruce seeks to unravel the mystery of the past while evading the ruling supervillain of this world, Omega.

Bruce comes to a disturbing revelation: he isn't Bruce Wayne at all. He is a clone, a backup plan established by the original Bruce who wanted to ensure that upon his death, a cloned replacement with all the training would take over as Batman. Bruce is further horrified to learn that the original Bruce Wayne survived the supervillain war by becoming Omega and has become embittered, twisted and ruthless. The ending has Bruce defeating Omega and beginning the work of rebuilding the world, hoping to carry on all that was good in Bruce Wayne while leaving behind the bad.

I am not sure I like the idea of Batman becoming a supervillain who is defeated by his clone, but LAST KNIGHT ON EARTH is still engaging with what it means to be Batman and declares that Batman is such a planner that he would, deliberately or not, plan for his own defeat should he ever become a supervillain. In contrast, Batman's demise in the Arkhamverse, based on a summary, doesn't seem to really tap into what makes Batman special.

However, I have never and will probably never play the game, so I can't claim to have any real opinion of it beyond saying it sounds like a strange choice.

SPOILERS for QUANTUM LEAP 2.09:

I have to say, I was impressed by how naturally the QUANTUM LEAP establishes that Hannah Carson is polyamorous, and her marriage in no way negates the possibility of a romance with Ben, with Hannah declaring that love is not a finite quantity, but a renewable resource that expands and grows to encompass and include. QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 is a wonderfully progressive show.

From a legal standpoint, a new series can certainly feature characters visiting a parallel Earth each week and call itself PARALLELS or THE BUILDING and serve as a legally dis-similar version of SLIDERS. However, I think trying to do SLIDERS with the serial numbers filed off is ultimately a reaction to not having the brand or a reaction against the brand, and the result, I find, is either a creation that is missing the brand name it wants to be or a creation that's trying to defeat the property that inspired it, ultimately defeating its own reason for existing.

I'm not saying that only SLIDERS can do weekly parallel universe exploration or that only STAR TREK can do spaceship adventure or that only AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER can do elemental powers. Lots of great and wonderfully original shows started out as clones of previous works. SUPERNATURAL and FRINGE were obviously inspired by THE X-FILES and modelled on THE X-FILES' formula of supernatural or science fiction monsters of the week, but both made changes that made each show distinct and original. SUPERNATURAL chose a very masculine energy and focused on the supernatural. FRINGE chose a more feminine tone and focused on the technological.

RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was based on James Bond, but Steven Spielberg and George Lucas inserted a lot of their own interests and perferences into their Bond-knockoff: in their hands, their version of Bond became an academic rather than an agent of espionage, a working class figure rather than a wealthy gentleman, an independent operator rather than an employee of the state, a specialist in ancient artifacts and history rather than in maintaining an imperialist empire. By the time Spielberg and Lucas were done, Indiana Jones was unrecognizable as James Bond.

Looking at SUPERNATURAL, FRINGE and Indiana Jones, I'd say that someone who wants to do a legally-dissimilar SLIDERS should either just do SLIDERS or, failing that, change the legally-dissimilar SLIDERS formula to the point where it isn't SLIDERS at all.

In terms of SLIDERS-similar works: FRINGE seems to draw a lot on SLIDERS, but it chose one parallel universe to focus on rather than a new one each week. THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE chose a specific alternate history to explore. The novel series PLANESRUNNER by Ian MacDonald featured nine parallel universes in a joint government and had a heavy emphasis on steampunk aesthetic and interdimensional civilization. These may or may not have been SLIDERS-inspired, but they are examples of exploring the concept of a parallel universe without mimicking SLIDERS' formula.

The SLIDERS brand has something special and significant that goes beyond the actors themselves or even the original creator. The appeal of SLIDERS are the aspects of it that cannot be replicated in a legally dissimilar verison because any non-SLIDERS show that copied SLIDERS' definitive traits would be sued for copyright infringement. The appeal of SLIDERS: the characters are, unlike the cast of STARGATE, untrained civilians from non-action oriented walks of life: a computer technician, a saleswoman, a soul singer and a teacher, and these underskilled ordinaries are put into an extraordinary situation of wonder, exploration, threat and danger.

The timer, a dated device even in 1994, retains a special charm in 2024: it is clearly a homemade device made out of leftover discards rather than a state of the art piece of technological development.

The four characters have a distinct and vivid chemistry that enables them to be paired up in fascinating combinations: the wise professor and the reckless student; the social activist firebrand and the withdrawn survivor of disappointment; the embittered middle aged man and the daring woman of action; the adventurous young man starting out and the older man searching for his second act.

The characters of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo were marvellously interpreted by Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies. However, the characters were so well-crafted that they would be just as vivid and dynamic in the hands of new performers reinterpreting the roles. The concept of SLIDERS with four untrained civilians facing an infinity of worlds is broad and all-encompassing to allow any kind of story in any setting. The tone of SLIDERS pitched at satirical comedy and parodic inversion of social conventions offers a brilliant space for eccentric, mind-bending, sociologically-exploratory storytelling while also permitting tech-driven stories, horror-oriented episodes, high action-adventure quotient entries, and other tones besides the original.

If I had to pitch something involving parallel universes that wasn't SLIDERS, I would not offer a series where the characters are travelling to a new parallel Earth each week.

Two writers, Joseph O'Brien and Brad Abraham, had a 2000-era pitch for a series that I thought was brilliantly SLIDERS-esque while being nothing like SLIDERS. Their website (now offline) presented this:

O'Brien and Abraham had assured me that they never seen SLIDERS. But their EDGEWORLD concept, to me, is an example of the kind of project that could be inspired by SLIDERS.

Something like this would be far more interesting than trying to copy SLIDERS with the serial numbers filed off by changing sliders into 'shifters' and the vortex into 'the slipstream' and the timer into 'the hourglass' and swapping out the geekboy, poet, musician and teacher with a shut-in female engineer, a technophobic survivalist, a barista and a pastor. (Those are not actual examples of anything that anyone has tried, I just made those up.)

For me: if for some reason I had to create a SLIDERS-inspired series, I would suggest a series set about a support group of people who have been displaced; some are from the far future, some are from the past, some are from alternate timelines that don't exist anymore, some are from outer space, some are from fantasy realms, and some are just present for the free coffee.

Even without the caveat of the original actors or creator, the brand of SLIDERS has a certain distinct identity within its character-concepts and comedic stylings that is specific and unique to SLIDERS.

I've read a lot of excellent SLIDERS-esque scripts that in some cases started as rebranded SLIDERS fanfic and then transcended their origins into beautiful and heartfelt and brilliant writing... but ultimately, I think anyone inspired by SLIDERS to create something of their own can create something better than a substitution and a facsimile.

Regarding DAREDEVIL on Disney+: Disney has remounted the series with two new showrunners with whom I have no familiarity. However, they have already made a drastic change: Deborah Ann Woll and Eldon Henson will be reprising their roles as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson. The two actors, who were not hired for the original and now shuttered Disney+ DAREDEVIL, have now been seen on set filming scenes with Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock).

https://thedirect.com/article/deborah-a … set-photos

There are rumours, however, that Karen and Foggy are only going to be in three of the 18 episodes. While that's disappointing, that's still three more episodes than they were in before.

Also, Marvel previously omitted the Netflix DAREDEVIL and all the other Marvel Netflix shows from their official timeline in their Marvel chronology book and on Disney+. This has changed: the Netflix shows are now part of the official timeline.

https://nerdist.com/article/daredevil-e … sney-plus/

I wonder if it's time to confront an inconvenient possibility:

What if Trump wins? We can't say it's not possible like we did in 2016 because 2016 proved us wrong.

We also can't say it's a certainty: a past member of this board prognosticated how Trump would be a mastershowman in 2020 and make Biden look fumbling and weak; instead, Trump came off as America's abusive father and Biden felt like the reasonable uncle.

The polls presenting a Trump lead are the same polls that predicted a Democratic wipeout over Republicans as opposed to the slim triumph of 2020.

But what if Trump wins? What do we do then? How do we survive?

Slider_Quinn21, I'm sorry, but my spare room is currently filled with dialysis supplies for my mother, so moving in with me is not an option.

Also, Canada is staring at a potential conversative government of its own because of the ineptitude of Liberals.

I would personally consider the entire situation of Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo losing the way home just to save Quinn as a situation for the sliders to deal with in the hypothetical series finale rather than a conclusion.

To describe the plot of "Fever", one would mention that Quinn is a prisoner of the CHC; that doesn't mean Quinn stays a prisoner. The story for "Eggheads" involves Quinn joining a sports team; that doesn't mean the rest of the series is about his Mindgame career. And the plot for Torme's imagined series finale would have a climax where the sliders find their way home but lose it to save Quinn.

I don't think that is necessarily where the story ends. It's just the situation that the sliders have to confront. I would speculate that Torme was open to leaving the sliders lost as writing technique to allow genuine peril. I like to think that Torme would have ultimately had a final twist to reveal that another way back has presented itself.

There was a lot of talk about how Torme's proposed 2021 SLIDERS revival would have killed Wade Welles off camera because Sabrina Lloyd was unlikely to return. I prefer to think that Torme would have revealed the deceased Wade to be alive if Sabrina came back as a guest-star.

Of course, just because I prefer to think something does not mean that it is true. It's just what I choose to believe.

**

It's strange: the account I've heard from most people is that Tracy Torme, visiting the set of TERMINATOR, heard James Cameron brag about how he stole the plot from "Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand", two episodes of THE OUTER LIMITS by Harlan Ellison, that Torme let Ellison know and Ellison approached Orion and Cameron, threatening a lawsuit. Ellison won a settlement and acknowledgement.

I asked Torme about the Ellison/Cameron situation in 2000 and Torme denied involvement. He said that he had never told Ellison he'd been robbed or encouraged Ellison to sue. His view was that Cameron was inspired by a variety of science fiction stories and influenced by many science fiction writers. Torme expressed respect for Cameron, friendship for Ellison, and picked no sides, saying that Cameron had the right to be inspired by other creators and Ellison had the right to pursue what he felt he was owed.

Starlog Magazine apparently had Cameron on tape bragging, "Oh, I took a couple of OUTER LIMITS segments" to write THE TERMINATOR. That strikes me as a more concrete basis for a lawsuit than whatever Torme might or might not have said to Ellison.

I have two theories. My first is that Torme's denial to me was a polite lie; he didn't think it appropriate to talk about his friend Harlan Ellison's legal affairs or to confirm to a fan that he'd encouraged someone to sue James Cameron and a film studio; it might offend Ellison and it might make potential employers wary of hiring Torme.

My second theory is that Torme's denial is true, but he did visit the set of TERMINATOR due to his friendship with Gail Ann Hurd; he may have told Ellison that he thought THE TERMINATOR was inspired by Ellison's OUTER LIMITS episodes and thought Ellison would be flattered; but Ellison may have viewed inspiration as theft and called his lawyer whose research revealed that Cameron was recorded crowing about the theft.

My personal opinion: there is a distinction between inspiration and theft. Indiana Jones was inspired by James Bond, but George Lucas and Steven Spielberg put so many of their own interests into Indiana Jones (history, archeology, Saturday movie serials, World War II, Nazi villains, artifacts, teaching, universities); the final version of Indiana Jones doesn't resemble James Bond at all and feels totally original. The TV show PERSON OF INTEREST, about a mass surveillance supercomputer used to prevent murders, was inspired by the TV show THE PRISONER and its story of total surveillance within a holiday resort/prison for spies. But PERSON OF INTEREST creator Jonathan Nolan put so many of his personal interests into PERSON OF INTEREST (procedural crime solving, trauma from war, artificial intelligence, the morality of benign surveillance) that PERSON OF INTEREST's weekly procedural murder prevention stories have no resemblence to THE PRISONER's stories of a spy trying to escape a gated community prison.

There is a way to do what Cameron did appropriately and respectfully. The STAR TREK episode "Arena", scripted by Gene L. Coon in 1967, was discovered to be alarmingly similar to a 1945 story, "Arena", published in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, written by a contributor named Frederic Brown. Coon had accidentally copied Brown's story; Coon and Desilu Studios therefore contacted Brown and asked to purchase his story, and Brown agreed to sell it.

THE TERMINATOR was an act of theft by Cameron's own admission. It's always been peculiar to me that Cameron, despite having loudly claimed that he plagiarized Ellison, still called Ellison "a parasite" for getting paid, given that the incrimination came from Cameron's own words. And while Torme denies involvement, I can't help but wonder if it were a factor in his contempt for how the third season of SLIDERS became a series of movie ripoffs that didn't make any effort to at least explore the genre and conventions of their ripoffs. It may also be why he said, in a podcast appearance, he tried not to watch or read other people's fiction when working on his own projects.

Perhaps by 2009, Cameron may have accepted that he'd stolen from Harlan Ellison, paid his debt to Ellison, and the matter was settled and Torme was welcome to work on a potential AVATAR show... but given Cameron's legendary ego, maybe not. Maybe Torme really wasn't involved at all in Ellison going after Cameron at all and Cameron had no grudge against him. Or maybe Cameron, operating in the world of big budget feature films, was never aware of Torme's existence until Torme was brought in for an AVATAR television series.

I'm not putting a name to the quoted post because I don't want my post to be perceived as directed at anyone in particular.

There are serious optics issues when a district attorney hires a lover to work as a special prosecutor. It opens up all sorts of vulnerabilities to nuisance motions.

However, Georgia courts and the Georgia Supreme Court have ruled repeatedly that romantic relationships between lawyers are not grounds for disqualifying prosecutors. Georgia courts have even approved of married lawyers trying cases on opposite sides.

The motion from Trump's legal team regarding Fani Willis and Nathan Wade is nothing but a nuisance motion. It claims there is a conflict of interest for Willis to have hired Wade to work on the election interference case, alleging a romantic relationship between them.

Conflict of interest: a situation in which a person has multiple interests, and serving one area of interest can involve working against another.

How can there be a conflict of interest from two lawyers working on the same case as prosecutors? Their interests are identical: to secure a conviction of the defendant.

Why is it inappropriate for Nathan Wade to profit from taxpayer money? Wade is working for the district attorney's office, a taxpayer funded department that paid him his hourly rate out of taxpayer funds. Why should a lawyer and prosecutor go unpaid for their work? Should lawyers and prosecutors work for free?

How exactly are Willis and Wade defrauding the public? Fani Willis paid Nathan Wade for his legal work by depositing the money for his work into Wade's bank account which Wade then used to make personal purchases. Receiving payments and making purchases is how consumer capitalism functions.

How exactly is Wade benefitting inappropriately from his hiring? Wade is being paid the same rate as John Floyd and Anna Cross, the other two attorneys hired to work on the case.

How is Wade's hiring a misuse of power? The district attorney has struggled to find lawyers willing to take on Donald Trump and many have refused to take the job because they are targets for harassment, and Wade is not the only lawyer hired by the DA to work this case.

How exactly is there misconduct against Trump in Wade being hired to prosecute Trump? Criminal prosecution is a valid legal process; a prosecutor is engaged in the work of the justice system, and Wade, like any prosecutor, gets paid the same whether Trump is convicted or not.

How exactly is there a conflict of interest in the case if Wade (allegedly) uses his payments to buy Willis anything? Their interest is the same: to convict Donald Trump.

If it's improper for a lawyer to work for the taxpayer and be paid by the taxpayer, then no one should ever work for government again. If it's improper for a person to be paid money for their work and then spend that money, then no one should ever earn a living again.

How exactly would an alleged romantic relationship between Willis and Wade affect the legitimacy or validity of the work they are doing together on the case they are prosecuting?

How would their shared goals -- convicting Donald Trump of election interference -- be in conflict from a romantic relationship?

People who are in the process of a divorce have the right to date. A broken marriage is a messy business. Divorce is a messy business. Consenting adults who are coworkers have the right to date. There is no conflict of interest between two lawyers with the same goals having a romantic relationship between each other.

Once again, in the state of Georgia, lawyers working on the same case have the right to date. Romantic relationships between lawyers are not grounds for disqualifying prosecutors or lawyers from working on cases against each other. Therefore, there's also no basis for disqualifying lawyers who are romantically involved and on the same side of the same case.

But having said all of that -- if Fani Willis and Nathan Wade are in a romantic relationship, then Willis hiring Wade was a poor strategic choice no matter what legal precedents had been established. Willis hiring Wade presented an easy point of vulnerability for a smear with a massive splash in the media that would become a distraction and an impediment.

I guess this was a roundabout way back to an adjacent position.

It's a fair question. I confirmed the details with Temporal Flux back in 2000, such as Torme receiving the scripts for Seasons 4 - 5 and putting the unopened envelopes in a box and refusing to open them, a detail Torme mentioned to me. Temporal Flux also confirmed that the email address I wrote to was genuine.

In addition, Torme shared with me a story idea about Quinn waking up to discover time has been rewound to the Pilot with all the other sliders alive and well and home, with the situation revealed to be a Kromagg trick from which the sliders escape, a story that Torme then shared with EP.COM in 2009.

Torme also voiced a fond adoration for Gene Roddenberry, a forceful loyalty to Brad Linaweaver, and a fondness for James Cameron and Harlan Ellison, amusing given how Ellison sued Cameron for Cameron stealing the plots of "Soldier" and "Demon With a Glass Hand" for THE TERMINATOR and how Torme was, presumably, working for Cameron on the AVATAR TV show that never went forward.

I would like to write one complete post here on "The Long Slide Home" to which RussianCabbie can link.

"The Long Slide Home" is an unfinished story by Tracy Torme. The plot was presented to Transmodiar, webmaster of EarthPrime.com, in June 2009; Torme may have presented his story intentions to another fan at an earlier point in 2000. There is some certainty and some high levels of speculation in what follows.

As posted before, Torme wanted to write fanfic in 2009. https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 292#p15292

Torme sent the following to Transmodiar:

Torme sadly didn't send EP.COM the rest of the storyline; he briefly conveyed paid work had taken priority and "The Long Slide Home" fell by the wayside, and then Torme ended up leaving Facebook. Years later, EP.COM heard from a SLIDERS staff writer that Torme had cancer and was extremely ill, and reports that Torme had been ill for some time began to come up.

I don't think Torme meant to cut contact and abandon "The Long Slide Home"; I think his chronic illnesses caught up with him. I think he regretted promising something he couldn't deliver. That may or may not be why he was more guarded and cautious with fans afterwards.

But what happened next in the story? I believe that I can offer an answer, admittedly a potential and speculative answer and not a definitive answer.

In 2000, I wrote some fan mail to Tracy Torme at an AOL address. He appreciated my message and invited me to chat on AOL Instant Messenger. During our talk, I asked Torme what his plan for a SLIDERS series finale would have been.

He replied that his ideas were not fixed and static plans, but rather potential possibilities. He imagined a final SLIDERS episode where the timer is breaking down, wormholes are becoming unstable, the sliders' journey is, due to mechanical issues, nearing its end. This matches his teaser for "The Long Slide Home".

In this finale idea: Quinn and Arturo make a desperate, final bid to return home and rig the timer to send the sliders backwards on their path through the interdimension, revisiting worlds they previously encountered, seeing the outcome of their actions which are sometimes good and sometimes bad, and enabling the story to resolve any unfinished plots (Kromaggs, Logan, the wrong Arturo, the Professor's illness, etc.).

The climax would have Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo returning home but Quinn stranded. Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would choose to give up home in order to find and save Quinn; they are lost in the multiverse once again (albeit with a working timer). The sliders would declare that their friendships are what matter most and so long as they have each other, they are home.

I asked Torme: would the sliders visit each previous world of every previous episode, or just a selection of them? Would there be an in-depth conclusion for the Kromagg tracking device arc and Arturo's illness and Logan the wrong Arturo? Or would it just be a passing resolution? Would the sliders really end the story lost again or would some other path home manifest?

Torme's answer: he would not have made those decisions until writing the full treatment, and might have reconsidered when scripting. Any arc he wanted to resolve in the finale might conceivably be resolved before the finale if a better story opportunity came up.

The question of which worlds the sliders visited again would be determined by which guest stars were available to reprise their roles for a finale, what sets could be built or rebuilt on a pre-production schedule, what locations would be available, and what would be achievable and feasible in the shooting days allotted.

This wasn't a master plan set in stone, but a framework to be versatile and flexible.

Would the series really end with the sliders lost again? Torme said he would have made that decision in the course of taking his story from an idea to a beat sheet to a first draft to a shooting script. The story's themes and character arcs would have evolved through this process, and he would choose whichever ending was best for the story as it took shape.

And of course, the ending would need to make use of guest-stars, sets, props, locations and plot points needed for the preceding scenes. Torme could imagine a bittersweet ending or an entirely happy one. Torme also specified: this plot was merely one of many possible ideas for a series finale.

The plot of the timer breaking down and making continued sliding untenable followed by travelling backwards through the interdimension is a "long slide home". It matches what Torme proposed to EP.COM as what he considered to be the natural conclusion of the show.

But it's entirely possible that whatever story Torme intended for "The Long Slide Home" on EarthPrime.com was going to be one of the many other possibilities he had imagined for an ending or something new that he devised in 2009.

It's unfortunate that Torme couldn't complete the storyline. Looking back, I suspect the only way "The Long Slide Home" could have ever been completed: Torme would have had to turn his outline over to a fan to write the full screenplay which Torme could edit or revise. This is also how William Shatner produced 10 STAR TREK novels.

However, this creates two issues. The first is logistical and creative: Torme's outline would have needed a fan writer who could capture Torme's tone and voice. Torme had an extremely specific take on SLIDERS which was not about Kromagg wars or Slidewaves or Slidecages or Combines or Unstuck Men and other sci-fi voodoo.

Torme's take on SLIDERS was about social satire and social commentary via black comedy that inverted and casted a jokingly critical light on societal conventions: TV court, accident lawsuits, reverence for royalty, sportsmania, music and fame, glamourization of Mafia and other criminal enterprise, organized religion (parodied via Wiccanism), wildlife preserves and poaching, admiration for gunfights, envy in corporate greed, dehumanization in addressing illegal immigration, education, police and black people (parodied via ageism), and more.

It was and is a very specific satirical skill that the average writer lacks. Even among the average SLIDERS fanfic writer, it's hard to find, and I say that as the most average SLIDERS fanfic writer of all time.

The second challenge is legal and regulatory. As a Hollywood screenwriter represented by CAA and the Writers Guide of America, Torme would have been discouraged from reading fan fiction because it would open all sorts of liability issues with potential accusations of idea theft. Torme would have been unfamiliar with fanfic writers and reluctant to hand over his SLIDERS story idea to a stranger. And the Writers Guild of America would frown on Torme effectively hiring unpaid, non-union labour outside the WGA.

However, it's fun to think about a fan fiction writer taking on Torme's outline. To me, there is a very short list of people qualified to adapt an alt-world heavy story concept from Torme and write it out in full:

One contender who comes to mind is Mike Truman (Recall317) who wrote a very lighthearted and capable Torme-style novellas and scripts with absolutely delightful alt-world ideas rendered with laugh-out-loud joke upon laugh-out-loud joke.

Truman really captured the elusive, winsome tone of SLIDERS at its most appealing, friendly, cheerful, imaginative, dynamic and fun. Truman's grasp of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is subtle yet dynamic and he captures their ease of friendship and individual voices. Truman would have done an amazing job of adding his own inventiveness and imagination and gleeful thrill to "The Long Slide Home", and Truman's version of Quinn is so brainy and clever, much like Truman himself, and his Rembrandt is so funny.

Another writer who comes to mind is Nigel G. Mitchell who created some of the best SLIDERS stories ever written with a strong sense of comedy but also a horror-oriented darkness that presented sliding as a bit of a nightmare journey. Mitchell would have been a superb choice for writing a slightly darker version of Torme's "The Long Slide Home" and his grasp of Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo is also low key yet dynamic, with Mitchell excelling at balancing Arturo's heroism with his ego and insecurity and writing Wade with such emotionality and determination.

Mitchell and Truman are both equally imaginative, but Mitchell's writing is scarier while Truman's writing is friendlier. I would consider them both excellent choices, but the most phenomenal choice would obviously be Temporal Flux who seems to have the best grasp of the very specific tone of SLIDERS.

TF's "Sliders Declassified" doesn't even feature any of the original sliders and yet easily recreates the specific tone and tenor of Torme's humour: self-effacing glee in the face of amusing alt-world histories that manifest in conversations that are simultaneously bizarre and naturalistic, and the understanding that SLIDERS is a low key series about personal interactions in pecular sociological frameworks as opposed to science fiction situations.

A Tracy Torme story needs true talent for satirical humour and horror, and not with the crashingly unsubtlety of SOUTH PARK or the sermon-like moralizing of STAR TREK. "The Long Slide Home" requires more than a pastiche of the original actors; it needs deftness, charm, and a sense of politics where the writer must poke fun if not stab at the left and right from above and below (as opposed to the center).

I think Temporal Flux would have crafted the most incisive alt-world jokes, parodies, observations, conflicts and perils in his version of "The Long Slide Home"; Mitchell would have produced the most frightening and thrilling version of "The Long Slide Home" and Truman would have offered the most joyful and lively adaptation of "The Long Slide Home". I would imagine that Torme's version would have been closest to TF's.

NBCUniversal has tolerated fanfic and scans of SLIDERS shooting scripts. They and the WGA probably would have tolerated a SLIDERS fan fiction from Torme the way the WGA ignored Robert Hewitt Wolfe releasing ANDROMEDA fanfic or David Gerrold working on STAR TREK fan films (although Paramount didn't ignore it).

However, I don't think Writers Guild would have tolerated Torme collaborating with a non-union, unpaid fan to write out Torme's story ideas. "The Long Slide Home" would only have been permitted to exist as Torme releasing a PDF that he wrote unpaid and alone, and with the customary disclaimer that this was unauthorized and unofficial.

I think Torme meant to write "The Long Slide Home", he sincerely intended to complete and deliver -- but then his health and body just could not match the passion in his mind. In the years that followed, Torme struggled through cancer, heart problems, diabetes, and while he had periods of stable health, he didn't get in touch with EP.COM to finish the project.

He may not have fully recovered; he may have felt the time for it had passed; he may have had second thoughts about writing fan fiction -- but I suspect that he also did not want to explain how very sick he had been, and how his health was still precarious and would likely remain so to his final days. It was private.

And then by the time he was ready to lift the veil on his health issues, he had (very modest) hopes for actually reviving SLIDERS as a TV show with some of the original cast, and his fanfic ideas were best saved for actual pitches.

That is my speculation, and it is highly speculative.

Upon reviewing the notes, I guess it also reveals:

We now know: if someone really wants Season 5 which was released in an extremely low production run and is difficult to find, Tracy Torme had a copy of the box set lodged under a sofa leg.

I would imagine that the weight of the sofa would have cracked the plastic and scuffed at least one of the disks, but a shorter episode count for Season 5 would actually make it less exasperating.

There would also be a Season 4 box set on the other end of that sofa, also under the sofa leg, and likely, one of the discs is also damaged by the weight of the sofa leg. This means that either "Genesis", "Prophets and Loss", "Common Ground" and "Virtual Slide" (Disc 1) or "My Brother's Keeper", "The Chasm", "Roads Taken:" and "Revelations" (Disc 5) are damaged. Meanwhile, "World Killer" is safe on Disc 2. However, Season 4 is much easier to come by on DVD.

I didn't say that white men and white grievance was Trump's only demographic and if I implied that, it was a mistake. But it is the demographic he targets, it's who he reflects, and to whom he speaks loudest.

To say "Women love him" of Trump is a false statement. The women who voted Democrat or third party didn't "love him"; the women I marched with after Trump's 2016 victory at various protests didn't "love him", so this absolutist claim is either an exaggeration of some personal perception or an error.

There are women who do indeed support Donald Trump. It would be accurate to say that fervent female Trump supporters "love Trump", but to say "women love him" is a level of blanket generalization that is erroneously meaningless at best.

Why do Republican women vote for sexual harassers like Roy Moore or Donald Trump? My current theory is that Republican women exist in an extremely patriarchal situation where they are misused, overworked or flat out abused by men -- husbands, fathers, brothers -- and to defend themselves would cut themselves off from whatever scraps of privilege they're permitted, so they lash out at people they perceive to be even weaker: people of colour or minorities or LGBTQ or the neuroatypical with a redirected rage that, originally meant for the men in their lives, is now internalized and reoriented to the point where they don't even realize the anger that makes them express their petty bigotries or vote with those bigotries in mind.

What motivates the black and Latino men vote for Trump? My current theory is that they have become accustomed to a society that treats them as lesser humans if not outright subhuman, especially in politics where there is an intergenerational experience of rarely even having a non-racist candidate for whom to cast a ballot if they were even able to vote at all.

And historically, people of colour have often voted for whichever racist seemed more entertaining or helpful to them, such as Franklin D. Roosevelt or John F. Kennedy, but they were under no illusions that Roosevelt or Kennedy would treat them well in person. My current personal theory is that Trump-supporting men of colour Trump may feel aspire to or feel represented by Trump's absurd and performative image of dominance, bluster, boorish ranting and juvenile masculinity even if he would only ever express bigotry towards them.

This is theory. This would all qualify as coping via tribalism (thank you for sharing that, Grizzlor, I have added that to my lexicon). As described, it would be aspirational admiration rather than mental illness, but I'm imagine there are cases where it has crossed into mental illness.

Trump speaks to aggrieved white men, but I certainly wouldn't claim he only speaks to them and I should certainly have identified that as his core demographic to avoid the impression that I thought it his only one.

Elizabeth Holmes' chief operating officer was Sunny Balwani, and they met when he was 37 and she was 18. They had some sort of romantic relationship and he was part of the whole Edison machine scam, but Balwani was her accomplice, not her mark.

I feel a bit heartened by Slider_Quinn21's takes.

**

Awhile ago, I was watching the mini-series THE DROPOUT, a biographical show about real-life grifter Elizabeth Holmes. It made me think of Donald Trump. In my view, Donald Trump's political career is the biggest con job in history where his marks (voters) think they're inside the grift as opposed to being squeezed and fleeced.

THE DROPOUT made me see that I am completely vulnerable to being manipulated in a similar way to Trump supporters, but the personas and methods to which I would be vulnerable exist are more feminine-presenting.

In THE DROP OUT, Amanda Seyfried plays Elizabeth Holmes, a real life person. The show covers how Holmes 'creates' a machine and chemical process that can test people for all sorts of illnesses and diseases and conditions from a single drop of blood from the finger. Holmes is certain that with relentless experimentation and engineering, microsampling blood would prove viable for full panel blood testing.

It's revealed at the outset (and in real life): the concept was based on Holmes imagining a more convenient blood testing experience but not based in any grasp of basic hematology or the human circulatory system. Holmes' fantasy ran into three very obvious problems: finger-drawn blood is from capillaries and distant from the veins and drawn from ruptured blood cells, and therefore diluted, inconsistent and inaccurate; finger-drawn blood is easily contaminated by clotting and skin cells; and finger-drawn blood comes at a low volume, requiring dilution to reach testing volume which makes testing even more inaccurate.

Will these problems ever be overcome? Maybe, but upon running into these problems, Holmes insisted that her Edison test worked/would work. Internally, Holmes called anyone who raised these problems to be cynics who weren't trying hard enough, even as Holmes had her useless tests shored up by blood dilution (which created inaccurate results) and conventional testing methods. Externally, Holmes presented herself as a genius wunderkind whose secret and proprietary process (secret because it didn't work, proprietary because it was a lie), saying that anyone who doubted her was just sexist.

Holmes was a beautiful woman asking the world to consider her intelligence and inventiveness; Holmes had an affectedly deep voice that made her seem socially dysfunctional but determined; Holmes presented as a female inventor in a world that has been extremely dismissive to women's achievements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Holmes was pushing all my buttons and the buttons of many men who didn't understand hematology and invested in Holmes' company or who did understand hematology but bought into Holmes' image.

Holmes was exposed and is now in jail for fraud with an 11 year sentence. I recognize that Elizabeth Holmes and Donald Trump in affect and appearance and tactics could not be more different, but at the same time, their frauds have a fundamental similarity: they present a deeply seductive image that targets the grievances and value systems of their marks to delude and misguide them. It's just that they have different demographics.

Trump's demographic is white men who feel that the privileges of being male and Caucasian have feel undermined by women and people of colour who aren't heterosexual. He preys upon their narcissism and wounded egos, telling them that they can overlook Trump's obvious lies and path of ruin because the sense of power and dominance is more important.

Holmes' demographic was also white men, men who felt uncomfortable with the privileges of being male and Caucasian. Men who wished to see privilege become equality and equity to the point where they would support and not question a woman describing a scientific technological process -- even if the science were obviously inoperable, the technology a flimsy illusion, and the process a scam.

This is something I could fall for. Everyone's a sucker for something.

I am terrified of the 2024 election. I don't dare make any predictions because the polls of 2016, 2020 and 2022 were so severely distorted that I've lost confidence in Nate Silver and his ilk. I'm sure they mean no harm, but something in their methodology and sourcing is just warping their findings to create images that are too distant from reality to be helpful or useful, at least to me at this point. That's mostly why I've been focusing on psychoanalysis of individual cases and talking about masks.

I wish I shared QuinnSlidr's certainty, but I don't. I'm scared. My fear could be affecting my judgement. I wish I had Slider_Quinn21's collectedness, but I don't have that either when it comes to the 2024 election. I am afraid. I'm also eating a lot of homemade Tex Mex which may have something or nothing to do with anything.

I started watching JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK. Then I remembered: I'd seen half of the movie with my niece a few years ago, but then we got distracted by her mother coming home from the airport with luggage and we turned the TV off to help her unpack. And then...

IB: "What were we doing before your mother came home?"

LAUREN: "Were we watching CONSTANTINE?"

IB: "No, it was a cartoon."

LAUREN: "Oh, right! We were watching a DC animated movie where Matt Ryan is the voice of Constantine. Should we finish it?"

IB: "I think we got to the part where the villain shows up and the villain's either Dr. Fu Manchu or a racist Chinese caricature that's as racist as Dr. Fu Manchu."

LAUREN: "I don't think we need to finish watching that."

I'm watching THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN (2018) and REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN (2019). It's not great, a passable but never phenomenal adaptation of the storyline. It's unfortunately sabotaged by the DC animated films before it, and, strangely, Jerry O'Connell, whom I'd forgotten had been voicing Superman.

This run of films, called the DC Animated Movie Universe (DCAMU), was established in JUSTICE LEAGUE: THE FLASHPOINT PARADOX (2013) where the Flash's time travel antics create this DC timeline that served as an ongoing continuity for most of the animated films from 2014 - 2020. The first installment was JUSTICE LEAGUE: WAR in which Superman was voiced by Alan Tudyk and Jerry didn't even play Superman until the DCAMU's Superman's second appearance in THRONE OF ATLANTIS.

The DCAMU team seems to have little enthusiasm for Superman. Jerry's Superman debuts in February 2014 in the Justice League ensemble and isn't Jerry; he doesn't appear again until January 2015's THRONE OF ATLANTIS and is finally Jerry; Jerry's Superman has small roles in JUSTICE LEAGUE VS. TEEN TITANS and JUSTICE LEAGUE DARK; he doesn't get a movie of his own until July 2018 and it's THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN, which kills him off.

In addition, THRONE established that Superman and Wonder Woman were dating; DEATH OF SUPERMAN refers to an offscreen breakup and Clark is now dating Lois, and has to establish the Clark/Lois relationship in the very same movie where Clark dies. We have spent so little time with Jerry O'Connell's Superman that his death means very, very little.

Jerry is... peculiar. His voice doesn't have the natural authority and confidence that I associate with Superman; it has a comedically unsteady, dramatically uncertain quality to it. He doesn't instantly convince as Superman. In addition, Jerry's Superman is written as so uncertain and self-doubting that Jerry only gets a few instances to play the confident, self-assured Superman.

When Jerry is called upon to play Superman as more like Tyler Hoechlin than Quinn Mallory, Jerry excels... but his hyperconfident Superman voice sounds so little like his unsure Superman voice that it almost feels like a different actor, and Jerry doesn't do particularly well at combining these two sides of Superman into a unified character. The problem may not even be Jerry, but whatever circumstances in which he recorded his dialogue and the direction that he received. Certainly, the script is not on his side.

Very, very strange. THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN and REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN again seem like two cheap animated films where more time and effort was spent designing the blu-ray box art than making the films.

Many years ago, I interviewed an actor who was on a show I liked. This actor would, a few years after our interview, post a lot of Trump-supportive content on his social media. Following Charlottesville with neo-Nazis marching, this actor made a number of posts sharing (false) claims that the Nazi-presence and rhetoric had been overblown or misrepresented. This made me very angry.

I said nothing (well, outside of private conversations, I said nothing). I didn't comment on it in the fan community. I ceased contact and would check in on this actor from time to time, if only as a study of how someone could be radicalized.

This actor eventually scrubbed his social media of all pro-Trump material while leaving behind a few pre-2015, Trump-mocking comments regarding Trump's business practices. Because this actor took down his Trump-support and ceased voicing any support of Trump at all, I'm not willing to name him in this post.

I should note: I don't believe that anyone had to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020 to make the minimum grade as a decent human being. People I respect voted third party or wrote in names because they didn't support Clinton, or because they believed in term limits when it came to Biden, or for other reasons entirely.

However, I believe that the act of voting for Donald Trump was and is evil.

I felt tremendous confusion when this actor expressed support for Trump's 2016 campaign of obvious racism, bigotry, white supremacy and white privilege. This actor had been so generous to me: a lengthy phone conversation, reviewing his quotes and offering clarifications and corrections, patient explanations of his process and work, indulgently sharing memories of times that were challenging and difficult.

He did all this for me, and I am a person of colour. I am an Asian man and I have a Muslim name (which is incredibly weird because my family has no Muslims and is Buddhist on one side and Mennonite on the other). Someone supporting a racist political party that encourages violence against anyone who isn't Caucasian -- that's not something I can ignore morally or in terms of personal safety.

Why did a Trump supporter do so much for an Asian man with a Muslim name? I had conversations with others and received a number of theories.

This twisted me inside for a long time. Eventually, I simply had to bar it from my mind. But in recent days, I've had to think about it, and I've revisited the theories that my friends and family offered me. I have then rejected these theories. I know in my heart (if not for a fact) that they are all wrong.

I have decided that he was sincerely nice to me, a person of colour, in a genuine and heartfelt way and he voted for and supported a white supremacist bigot. Both are true.

Why did he vote for Donald Trump and minimize the presence of Nazis the way Informant, a former poster here, was constantly lying and claiming there where no neo-Nazis even when they were roaring, "You will not replace us"?

A vote for Trump could be, as Grizzlor put it, tribalism, but neo-Nazi denialism goes beyond that.

I'm prepared to suggest that this actor, like Kelsey Grammer, suffered something in his life that shook him and damaged him and his sense of right and wrong when it came to the specific sphere of politics. There are actually numerous areas in his life where he may have experienced something disturbing and traumatic for which he deserves, like any person, sympathy and understanding.

Without going into detail, there was a very early setback in his education that deprived him of credentials he needed in the field of acting (don't bother trying to look this up, you won't find it). This may have caused a sense of failure and may have made it harder than it should have been to build his career, although he did build it. There may have been distress with the mother of his children not being in his life or his children's lives. I don't know that these were life-altering traumas for him. They may have been merely setbacks, but they probably weren't non-serious issues.

And then there was this actor's biggest job. The pinnacle of his career. He'd acted in small roles and acted in medium-sized roles and acting had become his full time job. Then came a role that would bring him to his largest audience yet. This role, while potentially career-defining, also came with a sense of humiliation: the actor was hired to effectively replace and imitate a different performer.

The original performer in this role was a big name who had played the character for years, but suddenly left the role. This actor I interviewed was the successor and his new job involved mimicking the original performer's performance. (I guess this gives it away)

This job must have come with the constant sense of being second-chosen, second-best, least-wanted, least-remembered, least-respected. There was the sense that the highest amount of regard for his career was when he performed in the shadow of someone else, copying someone else's work rather than offering something uniquely his own. This is an extremely caustic and mocking interpretation, and it is absolutely not how I see this person or his life or his work.

I consider this actor to a more skillful, detailed, thoughtful and talented than his predecessor, and truly a master thespian. I was impressed by how the actor's work was not imitation, but tribute where mimicry of the previous performer was just one facet of a very complex performance. And this actor could have built a successful career beyond this big role. He had the talent and physical appeal to do so, but he decided to end his acting career a short time after this job due to the need to spend more time with his family.

He left acting and found success in a different field. As a result, his former acting career was then defined by this one part where people saw him as a stand-in for somebody else; a scab, a stand-in, a substitute.

I have never and will never see him as a substitute for anybody. But it is how many others viewed him and viewed his life and viewed his work. That had to have affected him, especially when he was told by cruel fans in public that his failure to live up to his predecessor was why the show was cancelled.

These are not easy experiences.

As Dr. Frasier Crane might say: someone who experiences a sense of disenfranchisement, abandonment -- and who is treated as a shabby substitute -- could experience dire feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, weakness, and frustration that he is viewed as a second-rate copy rather than someone with his own set of experiences and skills and approach to his profession and craft.

Someone might go through this and then in their politics feel a desire for control, dominance, privilege, elevation, superiority, vindication and obedience, and this might be reflected in their voting for and supporting fascist authoritarianism and entitlement.

Someone could experience all these things and cast that vote... but still retain the ability to dismiss race and ethnicity on a personal level (like when interacting with a fan) while making racist and white supremacist choices on a political level.

One does not negate the other. Being kind to me does not erase the fact that this person cast a ballot for racism, fascism and authoritarianism. At the same time, casting that ballot did not erase the fact that this person was extremely generous to me on a personal and psychological level and, in their kindness to me, was also being kind to every other fan of his work.

This person has ceased supporting Donald Trump publicly. This means that their politics today are now a private affair as they are no longer voicing any opinion of it at all and have removed their previous opinions from their platform. For this reason, I will not name this actor nor will I associate this person with the cause from which he severed his public (if not private) allegiance. I have said nothing about this online for the past seven years because I did not want to diminish this person's standing or what he had shared with fans.

As someone who has voted for different parties at different times, I can say that there are votes for parties that I regret casting. I have made votes that, upon reflection, I consider to have been acts of evil on my part. I wouldn't want to be defined by a vote that I now regret, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

These are important subjects to discuss, and I don't feel silence serves anyone. However, I make the request that if we talk about this more, we avoid using this person's name as search engine optimization can cause associations that this person clearly no longer wants to maintain... and as this person never committed any actual crimes (none that I'm aware of, anyway), he has the right to change, to chart a new course, and to move on.

I felt a certain relief to know that Tracy Torme, while reverent towards Patrick McGoohan's performance and vision of THE PRISONER, felt that "Once Upon a Time" and "Fall Out" were random and nonsensical while appreciating that others enjoyed them.

I felt a certain validation at Torme's SLIDERS: THE CLASSIC EPISODES interview where he expressed the view that people who are extremely left or extremely right, politically, end up being very much the same. I regret not buying this book for $20 years ago at a small town stage theatre festival when i found it in a used bookstore and appreciate Grizzlor putting it up.

Morbidly, my suspicion ever since this thread started is that Tracy Torme pitched an original-cast-revival over a recast-reboot because he felt that he would be the only one vying for an original-cast-revival and he wanted to pitch it before he died.

My personal theory is that Torme felt that anyone else developing properties with NBCUniversal could pitch a recast-reboot... and that this hypothetical someone else could pitch the more marketable and sellable recast-reboot after Torme's death.

I don't think Torme planned to die within a few years of meeting with NBCUniversal, but he also knew that after prostate cancer and heart surgery and with his diabetes, there was a chance that his remaining years were more limited than he hoped.

I would also note that a more financially-minded creator might have pitched a recast-reboot to better his chances of a sale and a payment, and viewed it as a compromise to open the door to revisiting the original cast via guest appearances or audioplays or comic books or novels.

The rebooted MACGYVER series, which original creator Lee David Zlotoff championed and consulted on, for example, enabled Zlotoff to produce and shepherd an original continuity MACGYVER novel to address the original character's life and fate in the present day. The rebooted BATTLESTAR GALACTICA series also enabled comics to be published in the original series continuity.

For Tracy Torme, compromise was an ugly word. His loyalty was to the original characters as played by the original cast, and not to his bank balance. I respect that.

I saw a few video reviews on YouTube that report that the 2023 Xiaomi TV Box S is actually pretty capable at playing h.264 and h.265. I also saw a few reviews of my 2016 Mi Box 3 which reported that the Mi Box was totally unequipped for 4K output and should stick to 1080. I realized that on a recent update, the resolution had been increased and dry to 4K. It was too much for the hardware.

Also, the Android TV app I'd been using, MX Player, has been having some compatibility issues with older Android TV hardware.

I reduced the output video to 1080 at 24hz and tried a new video player app, Nova Player. Now all h.264 and h.265 videos are playing properly again, so I won't be upgrading or replacing the hardware. I will remain in the sub 4K zone.

Today was supposed to be the day Torme made a podcast appearance.

We were waiting for him to come back, to hear his perspective, his wisdom, his brilliance. Today we must resign to waiting until we join him in the next world. And yet, there's so much in his time and work and life from which we can learn and draw inspiration. And he really, really loved SLIDERS even when it often didn't love him back.

This is supposition, but I suspect that a SLIDERS reboot with new actors playing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo would have had a much better chance of getting on NBC or Peacock than the revival that Torme pitched.

And I think if Torme had been in it just to get another payday, he probably would have just pitched a reboot. There would have been no shame in it. WALKER: TEXAS RANGER, KUNG FU, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, CHARMED, ROSWELL, etc., all made marketing sense as reboots and they each earned the original creators a satisfying payment regardless of the creative merits of any of it.

Ultimately, Torme did not seem to be in it for the money. He did have to pitch a revival that accepted that Sabrina might be hard to book and John might have limited availability whereas Jerry and Cleavant would be ready. But in the end, his loyalty was not to his wallet but to Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo, which is not something you should expect to see very often or ever again.

In recent years, I was heartened to know that across decades of disappointment, Tracy Torme kept Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo in his heart and his wish for a revival was to bring Jerry O'Connell, Sabrina Lloyd, Cleavant Derricks and John Rhys-Davies back to their roles. A lot of shows and their creators have prioritized the brand (MACGYVER, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) over the cast, but Torme's loyalty was to those four characters as performed by those four actors. He cared about them as much as the fans did.

I hope that wherever he is, he found his way back to them, to his father, and to all of his questions regarding UFOs.

It occurs to me that I could and should have been much more charitable to a certain someone. And more scientific.

I was previously annoyed with a person because he dismissed a spectrum of scientific results as inconsistent and therefore non-existent. Then I saw him presenting anecdotes to dismiss publicly known facts and data about public figures and their public actions and statements and I proceeded to pillory it.

But I now find myself thinking: public figures are people and people's behaviour also exists on a spectrum. Which means that personal anecdotes are not, in fact, irrelevant, but rather evidence to consider and reconcile to surrounding facts and data. That would have been scientific and polite, especially when psychology is an extremely artful science of interpretation and imprecise modelling.

This person said that Allison Mack could not have been a sex trafficker because she was nice and posed for a photo with him. The reality is that both are true: Allison Mack was glowingly, incandescently nice to her fans and abusively vindictive and cruel to her female victims in her sex cult. This person was charmed enough by her to defend her and I called him an easy mark who was gullible, but that was unfair: he was taken in by a master manipulator who convinced him in a few moments that her pleasant treatment of him was the whole of her life and personality as opposed to one isolated compartment of a twisted existence. She convinced many smart people this way.

This person said that Christian Bale could not possibly have anger management issues because the recording of Bale abusing a film set crew member should not have been released to the public and that Bale was a family man and nice to his fans. The reality is that Bale is all these things. He visits terminally ill children and shooting survivors in hospitals and he has widely-reported anger management issues (verbally abusing a lighting technician, an arrest for assaulting his mother and sister) for which he has held himself accountable as he works through his problems. Good people can have anger management problems and mend their ways.

This person said that Kelsey Grammer was extremely nice to fans in response to some of us expressing feelings regarding Grammer's support for America to become fascist dictatorship as recently as December 2023. The reality is that both are true: Grammer has one mode of conduct when engaging with his public and an entirely different mode of conduct when deciding which politicians for whom to vote. Grammer has described himself as someone whose life choices are disastrous but whose acting choices are splendid. When facing a fan, Grammer is facing regard and appreciation for the only area of his life in which he has been consistent in his competence: acting. When facing politics, I would posit that Grammer employs cognition and judgement that have been severely damaged by deeply traumatic events.

And maybe if I'd said that at the start, this person would have felt reconciled with rather than ridiculed.

Sorry, Grizzlor. Must try harder.

And as I wait for some x-rays and bloodwork (pretty sure it's nothing, just want to make sure the pneumonia didn't leave lasting damage, and yes, this is transparently a note I'm leaving in case a workmate wonders why I'm not at work but somehow have time to post on Sliders.tv)...

On the subject of to what degree the US is divided between Trump and Biden voters, I personally lack the understanding of statistical analysis needed to reconcile Grizzlor and QuinnSlidr's percentages. I will bring it up with a statistician I know once she returns from her holiday and see if she has anything interesting to share.

On the subject of whether or not Trump voters are mentally ill, note that I didn't make such an assertion. I only said that I think Kelsey Grammer is mentally ill (as anyone would be after the savage murders of two family members, one a distant father and another a beloved sister).

The claim that all Trump voters are mentally ill is... something I wanted to think about more.

I would say: from a cursory and inexpert review, it seems to me that QuinnSlidr's and Grizzlor's explanations of Trump voters (mental illness and tribalism) are different but complementary perspectives regarding the same spectrum of behaviours.

On one end of the spectrum, there is narcissistic personality disorder and shared psychosis. On the other, there is tribalism manifesting via a variety of cognitive biases including but not limited to selective perception, Semmelweis reflex and false consensus bias.

Cognitive bias is not, clinically speaking, a mental disorder. A cognitive bias is a systematic deviation from rational and objective thought, a normal and natural coping mechanism of human experience. In contrast, mental illness refers to conditions of distress and disability due to cognitive function becoming impaired to the point of crisis in function. However, both cognitive bias and mental illness can create the behavioural phenomenon on display in Trump voters.

I don't know that QuinnSlidr and Grizzlor's perspectives are actually in any real opposition while their personalities are clearly at odds. What are their personalities?

QuinnSlidr is militantly Democrat, Democrat to the point where I worry that he is blindly Democrat. While I vote Canadian equivalent Democrat (Liberal or NDP depending on polls), I do not think that all good in the world will ever be found in any one particular philosophy or political party nor would I ever ignore the faults, failings, crimes or corruptions of anyone for whom I'd ever voted.

I find that QuinnSlidr can be aggressively supportive of Biden but set aside Biden's wrongs or failings or simply doesn't address them. I would urge my friend QuinnSlidr to be cautious and to be just as critical towards politicians he supports as he is with the politicians he opposes.

And QuinnSlidr, when he is talking politics, often communicates in absolutes, and because they're absolutes I don't disagree with, we haven't had much disagreement. However, speaking in absolutes is something that I personally try (and often fail) to avoid.

I find that Grizzlor, while having declared his loyalty to democracy (small D), also speaks in absolutes and delivers his absolutes with reasoning that consistently displays confabulation (to which I myself am not immune, see my posts on THE ORVILLE writing team and shooting schedule), confirmation bias (I do that too sometimes), cherry picking, non-sequiturs, and facile deflection.

I find that QuinnSlidr is hypersensitive to arguments made on foundations in cognitive bias and almost reflexively calls out anyone who voices logical errors as a liar (which I have done myself but maybe shouldn't have).

Grizzlor, in addition to speaking in absolutes, often attempts intimidation by appealing to supposedly higher authorities, and has also displayed flashes of authoritarianism in his behaviour. I find that QuinnSldr is also provoked by Grizzlor's authoritarianism and I find that righteous and reasonable.

In turn, I find that Grizzlor is hypersensitive to his logical errors, factual errors and faulty reasoning being examined, deconstructed, reviewed and disassembled because it causes him to experience cognitive dissonance: the awareness that he has made at least two contradictory and at times mutually exclusive claims or that his reasoning or presumptions are in opposition to facts.

I find that ireactions (that's me) is sometimes far too gleeful in pointing out these errors and clearly finds it really, really, really funny. ireactions clearly takes way too much mirth in bringing up how Grizzlor's denied that Allison Mack was running a sex trafficking operation on the grounds that she posed for a photo with him. ireactions thinks it's funny when ireactions' own errors are pointed out (often in psychotherapy), and ireactions (still me) forgets that it can upset others (although Grizzlor often denies being upset).

ireactions (me again) sometimes feels he has license to take amusement in this on the grounds that Grizzlor has said that he did not put any thought or care into his writing and that he takes no responsibility for anything he has said in the past or anything he will say in the future or anything he is saying right now and doesn't really care what ireactions thinks. at that point ireactions (ahoy!) feels free to cut deeper than he otherwise might, thinking Grizzlor doesn't care what ireactions thinks anyway.

I think ireactions (me again) needs to rethink how much pleasure he takes in pointing out the cognitive errors of others and adopt a more neutral tone. Let's try it!

Observe this example of cognitive bias:

The argument here is that an audio recording of Bale's anger management difficulties is invalid evidence because it should have been private. The term for this is a red herring; the origin of the recording does not negate content of the recording.

This argument subsequently ignores the provided information that Christian Bale was arrested for assaulting his mother and sister (although not charged). This argument's avoidance is a textbook example of confirmation bias: he ignores what doesn't confirm his personal assumptions and pretends it does not exist, even when this is directly contrasting with the term "family man".

This argument then emphasizes how Christian Bale has a family and implies that Christian Bale was personally pleasant. This is a non-sequitur: the information, while (presumably) true, has no bearing on whether or not Christian Bale has anger management issues.

Then there's this straw man argument:

But in the original comment, Bale was only described as having anger management issues, based on statements of fact: this argument misrepresents the comment as saying that Bale is a bad person. In actuality, "anger management problems" is not a complete character description and many steps away from "violent assaulter" or "abuser," terms which were not used to describe Bale.

People can have anger management problems and manage them. Christian Bale has publicly apologized for his misdeeds and criticized himself; he has subjected himself to live ridicule for his failings, which are the mark of someone with a healthy ego and openness to change. His issues with anger informed the Batman character and are a matter of public record and do not in any way benefit from minimization and denial.

When a person employs a style of argument that is obvious in its fallacies, overt in misrepresentations and declared in forceful absolutes, it comes off as deceptive. It is a style of communication exudes dishonesty, even if no deceit is genuinely intended. That is why QuinnSlidr has called this person a liar and that is why I have done so as well (although I have come to see it as cognitive disorientation rather than deception).

This may also be why this person has been in what he described as "wars" on other message boards. This communication style is antithetical to trust and exchange.

The appearance of deceit is further prominent when this person demonstrates confabulation and deflection where recall of previous events is incorrect, a little self-serving, and therefore can seem deceitful to those disinclined to be charitable.

Observe the response to me back in 2018 after I said that Allison Mack was in a cult and shared news that she was being investigated for sex trafficking:

As is clear from the 2018 words: this person declared that Allison Mack could not possibly be a sex trafficker on the grounds that she posed for a photo with him. This argument is a non-sequitur; he made a conclusion that had no logical relation to the premise. Sex trafficking is not in any way precluded by posing for a photo.

This is a pattern. Observe:

Posing for a photo with does not prevent someone from being a human trafficker. Having been passingly pleasant to someone and having a family does not prevent someone from having anger management problems or from having trauma and mental illness from the murders of a father and sister or from being a determined Trump supporter.

Those are all non-sequiturs whether applied to Christian Bale or Kelsey Grammer.

Then we have confabulation. Observe:

Note the confabulative deflection to provide a straw man argument. He claims he is being accused of supporting Allison Mack in her crimes.

But that is not the case at all. Instead, it's an observation that he makes assertions where his evidence consists of anecdotes, personal or public, that relate to the person in question but have no relevance to the specific issue.

He is declaring that he is accused of involvement in the NXIVM cult. This false recollection allows him to defeat an accusation that wasn't being made.

Someone unfamiliar with him would call him dishonest and deceitful, but I feel confident that this is not deception but cognitive error.

I must say: ireactions (hey there) would have done better had he delivered these observations in a more detached and distant fashion rather than conveying them in a mocking tone.

Then we go to brief exhibitions of authoritarianism where he expresses the wish to dominate and control to dictate obedience. Observe:

He complains that he lacks the authority to set the boundaries of what does and doesn't qualify as a discussion of American politics or normal discussion, but his desired boundaries are self-contradictory with many fallacies of definition.

He claims public health policy is not a matter of politics, that public figures' public support of politicians do not reflect their personal or public character and are not a matter of politics; that public figures and their public actions and public statements shouldn't be discussed in a public forum; and then declares that discussing his errors of reasoning in a discussion is not "normal" discussion, and implies that subjects should require his personal approval and disapproval.

This assertion reflects a desire for authoritarianism, for the power to dictate what is and is not discussed, and to set subjects out of bounds should they fall outside the borders of his confirmation bias. It betrays a severity of insecurity and a desperation for control and dominance.

This is also extremely triggering to QuinnSlidr who can clearly spot an authoritarian bent within five words.

But maybe that flair for authoritarianism is a mirage. Maybe it's there because I have made my points in a derisive and mocking way when I should have been detached, clinical, analytical and unemotional.

Maybe I should have found a way to make my observations without causing to Grizzlor experience not only ridicule but cognitive dissonance (which he may say he didn't), and then he wouldn't express the desire to take control of this message board to dictate what subjects are permitted, and then he wouldn't use wording and sentiments that raise QuinnSlidr's blood pressure.

Maybe it's my fault.

I called him an easy mark. I told him he was gullible. I said he was easily tricked by a pretty girl who was a sex trafficker. This has clearly rattled him (although he may claim it didn't) and sparked his desire to dominate.

In the past (and I don't mean the distant past, I mean like January 2023), I too have been gullible and easily tricked by a pretty girl who was a narcissistic sociopath whose only redeeming trait was that she was too twistedly dysfunctional to pose any serious threat.

I too have confused personal anecdotes for logic and reasoning.

I too have engaged in confabulation. I too have had dubious ideas about health (in the range of dubious herbal supplements).

There isn't a thing I've said about Grizzlor that someone hasn't said about me; there isn't a thing I've said about Grizzlor that I wouldn't admit to myself.

I guess I didn't feel upset or insulted when someone pointed it out, but relieved to know my error. I failed to think about how I was making someone else feel and should really have given that more thought.

Thinking about it... I have come to realize that was a mistake that set an argumentative tone that swept QuinnSlidr up as well and I regret it.

I apologize and will no longer gleefully point out the errors of others and adopt a more neutral tone.

Maybe if I don't do that anymore, Grizzlor will manage his biases and desire for dictatorship and QuinnSlidr will consider giving Grizzlor the benefit of the doubt.

On a not-unrelated note, there's an actor whom I won't name who was super-nice and generous and kind to me and they are or were a Trump supporter and... may or may not be one now and I will have some thoughts on that tomorrow without naming names because they may have had a change of heart, whereas Kelsey Grammer was supporting Trump as of December 2023.

X-Ray time.

Yes, well, given that you once defended a celebrity sex trafficker based on little more than her being conventionally attractive and willing to pose for a photo with you, you have a history of being an easy mark, won over by any niceties.

This is due to your habit of ignoring any evidence that does not fit your presumptions, your confirmation bias and deflective cherry picking: you downplay a publicly divulged history of troubled mental health by referring to a talk show; you emphasize an anecdotal pleasant encounter, all so you can dismiss the idea that someone's father and sister being violently murdered could cause mental illness.

Regarding Christian Bale: to get caught on tape screaming at a crew member may be unfortunate; but to also be arrested for assaulting your mother and sister is an anger management problem. (Charges were dropped.) Once again, you engage in deflection: you dismiss hard evidence of Bale's anger issues that you cannot refute, just by claiming it shouldn't exist, and ignore the other incident.

You have done this with Wil Wheaton in reverse: you heard his description of how he cut ties with his mother and father because they stole his money and mocked his acting; you ignored the financial fraud and said Wheaton was ridiculous to cut ties over childhood disputes, emphasizing only what justified your personal dislike of Wheaton. Confirmation bias.

Evidence doesn't cease to be just because you didn't like where it came from. Sex trafficking and trauma don't vanish on the grounds that the people in question were pleasant with you or your peers. Child abuse doesn't disappear based on your disliking the survivor.

But it's good to know that if I pose for a photo with you in a passing encounter, you will vouch for my character no matter what.

The thing about a character like Dr. Frasier Crane is that he takes on a life of his own and develops an autonomy and identity that is fundamentally separate from actor even if the actor defines him.

I've enjoyed the 10 episode FRASIER revival season, too. It's not as skillful as the original, but it's enjoyable and even at its worst, only inoffensive.

One of my favourite TV shows is FRASIER. Frasier is a psychiatrist and radio show host, a brilliant and widely educated person who is also pompous, bumbling, and insecure, basically Professor Arturo in psychiatry and played by Kesley Grammer. Frasier's politics are clearly left of center.

FRASIER was a sex positive, LGBTQ-friendly show (regular cast members David Hyde Pierce and John Mahoney were gay) with Frasier's effete demeanor and fixation with opera and men's fashion causing people to think him gay (which he found flattering), and Frasier was obsessed with being politically correct, in one episode allowing a colleague to completely take over his radio show and reduce him to silence for weeks of episodes simply because she was black and he was unwilling to silence her (or respect her by giving her his critical opinion, haha).

In contrast, Frasier's actor, Kelsey Grammer, is an unrepentant Trump supporter. I wondered how Frasier would reconcile that and turned to Sydney, a language model powered by Bing AI, to write up some thoughts on the matter. I had to feed the AI various arguments and sentiments to produce this essay from Frasier Crane on Kelsey Grammer.

While the recasting for WHAT IF is mostly fine, it's certainly preferable to have the performer who originated the live action role continue in the animated tie-in. The contracts for WHAT IF weren't in place, but they sound like they will be on James Gunn's animated films for DC.

Watching Marvel's WHAT IF? with the full motion animation, lush and dense environments, smooth camerawork, hyperkinetic editing, compelling shot composition, immersive soundscape, high energy voice acting -- and I have to wonder, why exactly are those DC Universe Original Animated movies still being made? They look stiff and immobile compared to WHAT IF?

The original BATMAN and SUPERMAN WB animated cartoons used simple character designs for smooth animation on a TV schedule and budget, but the DC Original Animated Features choose a mid-point of realistic designs, a moderate level of motion, and as recently as CATWOMAN: HUNTED, the overall effect is stiff cardboard cutouts moving back and forth on a two dimensional plane. There's never the sense that the actors are in the same room; they feel like they were recorded on separate dimensions of existence

The DC Universe Original Animated features look like amateur student films. They diminish the DC brand as cheap and rushed. I don't think it's due to any lack of talent; the movies are probably being made in too little time with too few resources. I don't understand why they're allowed to exist. They can't be that profitable and they're at best average.