Reboots: The Return of Sliders (?), Quantum Leap, and Other Properties (Page 9 of 12)

ChatGPT

Can SLIDERS learn anything from COBRA KAI, the highly successful revival of THE KARATE KID movies from 1984, 1986, 1989 and 1994?

Well, there is one thing that COBRA KAI does that I really like: COBRA KAI is extremely respectful and constructive will all aspects of THE KARATE KID movies. COBRA KAI has the Karate Kid, Daniel, express his longing and love for his now-deceased mentor, Mr. Miyagi, and has Daniel passing on the lessons his teacher taught him but with Daniel's own spin on his old learnings. COBRA KAI declares that all the story elements and characters of the original KARATE KID and its sequel are significant, meaningful events that are remembered with warmth and appreciation but also with some humour and the ability to poke fun.

But COBRA KAI is also respectful towards the parts of the KARATE KID franchise that are mocked and dismissed by fans. THE KARATE KID III is one of the most-loathed films ever made and described by its own director as "a terrible movie and a poor imitation of the first one."  And yet... COBRA KAI has made a meal out of it over the last four seasons of the show.

In the second season, COBRA KAI delves into KK3's clumsy storyline and has Daniel, the title Karate Kid, describe the plot of KK3 where he joined the bullies' karate dojo and unleashed a darkness in himself of which he is deeply ashamed. This plot point was, even to longtime fans, shocking; Daniel was so out of character in KK3 that most fans had blocked it out of their memory, but COBRA KAI even showed clips from KK3 to set this unfortunate part of Daniel's story in stone and mine it for characterization.

In KK3, the antagonist John Kreese received some brief references to his war trauma in Vietnam that were presented in a crass, cartoonish fashion where Kreese was simply an insane bully. COBRA KAI's third season also delved into this in flashbacks, showing Kreese's origins as a sweet and honourable kid whose Vietnam captivity and the betrayal of a commanding officer warped him into the twisted, cruel man who terrorized Daniel in the original KARATE KID movies. COBRA KAI took a very silly element of KARATE KID 3 and made it meaningful.

In KK3, the other antagonist was Terry Silver, a ridiculously thin character; Terry was a fortysomething Vietnam vet turned wealthy industrialist who inexplicably spent weeks and tens of millions of dollars trying to humiliate Daniel in a karate tournament in a convoluted and labyrinth plan, each step of which Terry carried out with bizarrely hysterical giggling. COBRA KAI brought Terry back in the fourth season and Terry expressed deep embarrassment over his obsessive need to humiliate a teenager back in the 80s; he confessed that he'd been traumatized by Vietnam and had been high on cocaine during the entire third movie.

However, Terry's buried demons soon resurface into a more disturbing form and he becomes the central antagonist for COBRA KAI's fifth season. Once again, COBRA KAI took an incredibly silly and clumsily written aspect of the KARATE KID mythos and took it seriously, infusing it with thought, awareness, tragedy and charm.

One other much maligned aspect of KARATE KID III was the character of Mike Barnes, a karate tournament contestant whose fighting style consisted of screaming deranged and racist insults at Daniel and his Karate Kid teacher. Barnes reappears in the fifth season of COBRA KAI and the moment he runs into Daniel, Barnes apologizes for his behaviour and for his terrible words and actions, saying that for his unsportsmanlike conduct, he received a lifetime ban from karate and lost his purpose in life which he realized he'd brought upon himself; he turned his hands to building furniture and he is relieved to see Daniel so that he can make amends. Daniel is deeply relieved that his old enemy is no longer an enemy and that he only needs to worry about the other two.

This is something I really appreciated about COBRA KAI; it declared that even the bad aspects of KARATE KID are still part of the story and they belong and that if regarded with love and care and interest and curiosity, they can become meaningful and vital and special.

A SLIDERS reboot would probably have to do this in a highly indirect way.

Quantum Leap hanging in there - renewed for season two:

https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/amp/news … -season-2/

I love it

I think you're referring to the QUANTUM SLIDE pitches: https://earthprime.com/sliders-comics/lost-comics/

Acclaim Comics fell apart in 1998 and ceased publication, making a brief return a year later only to cease once more. As far as I can tell, Acclaim had across the board distribution issues and were having trouble getting their books into comic shops. In addition, their parent company, video game manufacturer Acclaim Entertainment, were having serious financial difficulties in getting paid for their video games from licensors who'd commissioned their services. The entire company went down; I don't think they specifically cast aside SLIDERS.

That said, their stewardship of the popularity was... peculiar. For whatever reason, they hired superhero veterans to write and draw a property that was really more suited to DC-Vertigo style writing and artwork. They had deadlines that required some decent comic book writers to hack out scripts without any real familiarity with the series and no time to properly watch and absorb the existing episodes. They nonsensically had two excellent artists for NARCOTICA with two totally contradictory styles draw opposite halves of one story. This may have more to do with the haste and rushed licensing demands from Universal and less to do with Acclaim Comics themselves.

Well, former comic book editor Valerie D'Orazio has written some horrible, horrible stories about how she was harassed and threatened as a woman working in comic book publishing and administration. D'Orazio worked at Acclaim Comics during the SLIDERS licensing period and right up to Acclaim's shutdown, and... D'Orazio had absolutely nothing bad to say about the company.

D'Orazio is filled with fiery outrage and loathing for DC Comics and for a stint at Marvel, but with Acclaim, she notes that her boyfriend at the time was cheating on her and that she overindulged at the open bar at an Acclaim party and doesn't remember what happened next.

When D'Orazio got over her hangover and staggered into work, she was forced to attend an office meeting with every staff member present where Acclaim's chief, Fabian Nicieza, proceeded to lecture the entire office on being careful with alcohol consumption, looking out for each other, and ensuring that everyone came out of a party and made it home safely. He deliberately told the entire team to be more responsible and made sure not to single any one person out, giving everyone dignity while laying out their duty.

Acclaim is the only publisher to come out of D'Orazio's memoir looking like a good company of good people. I don't think Acclaim Comics failed; I think their parent company failed them.

Sliders will be back.  I'm less convinced that Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo will return.

Is anybody here familiar with Table Top Role Playing Games.   I knew of D&D ( i guess that qualifies?) but didn't really understand the market / active audience around this.

There  is a company called Free League that has licensed numerous properties (including Amazon's Tales From the Loop): https://freeleaguepublishing.com/

The games seem to be niche market, high priced producted ($50 to $100) that attracts a loyal "geek" audience who just loves this stuff.  Since SLIDERS has very high brand familiarity, and a choose-your-own adventure element, I am wondering if SLIDERS may be a good fit for a game publisher.

Quantum Leap is OK.  I like it being a continuation of the original series.  OTOH they're playing very fast and loose with the rules of leaping and characters seem to be keeping secrets just for the sake of keeping secrets, which is too much of a contrivance.

Been watching some of the Paramount+ Twilight Zone reboot with Jordan Peele (also currently airing on SyFy).

The stories are kind of middling (the Apple TV Amazing Stories reboot was much better); but Jordan Peele as narrator is spot on perfect.  It’s basically a Rod Serling impersonation, but Rod’s character is what gave the series its identity.  Rod was in many ways the first Slider; we followed him each week as he traveled from reality to reality and encountered strange places and ideas.

That said, I was really struck by the penultimate episode of Peele’s season two, “Try, Try” starring Topher Grace.  It starts slow and is a bit too wordy, but it builds into something really interesting.  On reflection after the viewing, it improves more.  It was a refreshing take on an old sci-fi trope.

With today’s nominations, we now we have a Sliders type movie that stands to sweep the Oscars.  How much longer can Universal ignore what they’re sitting on?

I guess they’re not interested, but I still think Seth McFarlane / David A. Goodman would be perfect.  Seth has a development deal with Universal right now

I think there is a lot making a SLIDERS revival difficult right now. Peacock is losing $3 billion this year. Revivals of existing NBCUniversal properties have proven to have a lot of misses, a few small successes, and not necessarily a lot of hits. MACGYVER and QUANTUM LEAP did okay. But SAVED BY THE BELL, PUNKY BREWSTER and pre-streaming revivals like KNIGHT RIDER and BIONIC WOMAN all had more cultural weight than SLIDERS and none of those were successful enough to stay on the air.

Then we have Tracy Torme who, for reasons I fully understand, pitched a revival that wasn't going to be a clean reboot like MACGYVER but instead called for using Jerry and Cleavant as the original sliders with paths to bring John and Sabrina in pending their availability. This next-generation approach was highly successful for GHOSTBUSTERS and BILL AND TED (on streaming services), but GHOSTBUSTERS and BILL AND TED were cultural phenomena. With SLIDERS, yes, people remember the pilot on FOX, but SLIDERS is in the position of really needing to start over and build the brand from ground-up.

Torme, however, seemed to want to build on a foundation that, fairly or unfairly, is viewed as shaky and a little inaccessible (if we're sticking to the theory that Torme was going to say that some time after "The Guardian", the sliders missed the window and hand to settle down on a parallel Earth and all the post-"Guardian" episodes were doubles/dreams and nightmares after the Professor had a bad taco). It wasn't a clean reboot, and NBCUniversal very understandably didn't want a SLIDERS that wasn't a clean reboot.

Torme might feel that the only version of SLIDERS worth pitching was the one he felt passionate about pitching and that was a next-generation pitch, whereas someone else could pitch the clean reboot. And maybe that's what needs to happen: someone like Seth MacFarlane has to pitch NBCU (and maybe Torme) on getting behind a reboot to SLIDERS featuring new performers playing Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo. It clearly isn't Torme's first choice, but it's called BROADcasting for a reason.

Quantum Leap has been back for two weeks and nobody told me! Come on now. TemporalFlux, where are your Quantum Leap reviews???

PARTY DOWN is a cancelled two season show that's a bit like that reboot of SLIDERS that I pitched where Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt and Arturo are running a mini hamburger restaurant called Sliders. PARTY DOWN is about a gang of misfits who are alternatively depressives or delusionals or some combination of both; they are caterers and wait staff for parties. Every episode features their hijinks and disasters at a different party whether it's a birthday, a corporate function, an orgy, a funeral, a wedding, or a mafia meeting.

PARTY DOWN features Adam Scott as Henry, a deeply depressed bartender/waiter/ex-actor whose miserable neuroticism is oddly reminiscent of Tracy Torme's original conception of Quinn Mallory before Jerry O'Connell was cast. There's also Ryan Hansen, an airheaded male model/actor whose dim-witted good-naturedness and strangely compelling talent is oddly reminiscent of Jerry O'Connell in his early 20s. Also present is Lizzy Caplan as Casey, a sardonic stand-up comedian with a certain wonky energy that's oddly reminiscent of Sabrina Lloyd but with a more cynical bent.

Rounding out the waiters is Jane Lynch as Constance, a bit-part actor who thinks she was more successful than she actually was with a certain hapless confidence that's oddly reminiscent of Cleavant Derricks. And then there's Ken Marino as Ron, the groundlessly arrogant 'team leader' who is vastly overconfident in his leadership and oddly reminiscent of John Rhys-Davies.

The show is noteworthy for how it is bitterly devoid of optimism. None of these would-be actors ever get a worthwhile role and even if they do, their scenes are cut from the movies. None of their business plans to escape their minimum wage drudgery go anywhere. None of their romantic pursuits are in any way a meeting of the minds and in fact just add a numbing effect to their mindless jobs as caterers and waiters. None of the supposed professional opportunities they find from 'networking' as caterers and waiters lead anywhere.

I'm not sure who even watched this show; there was a 20 episode order across 2009 - 2010 on STARZ and the show reportedly had an audience of around 100,000 viewers. STARZ rightly cancelled it in a vaguely optimistic 20th and final episode and that was clearly the end of that.

For reasons I cannot explain, PARTY DOWN had its Season 3 premiere this past week, 13 years after the Season 2 finale back in 2010. Everyone except Lizzy Caplan as Casey has returned for a new run of six episodes. (She had scheduling issues.) The show has had to come up with a reason for why everyone except Casey is still cater-waitering after 13 years. I'm excited to watch it.

Nobody watched this show. It was cancelled. It was over. Now it's back. Could this happen with SLIDERS?

If you were to do this story, you would probably have to premiere the 2023 show with the new sliders and put your revelation about the original sliders at the end of the first season to make it an entry-level story.

Maybe the sliders are four homeless people who choose to squat in the soon-to-be demolished Mallory house, they find Quinn's abandoned sliding machine and uncover Quinn's first-first timer (a MicroTAC 9800x rather than the UltraLITE model, presumably a prototype of the original timer that Quinn powered with double-As instead of the regenerative power chip). The new sliders trigger the timer by accident and are lost in the multiverse.

Throughout the new pilot and subsequent episodes, the new sliders encounter Quinn, Wade, Rembrandt, Arturo, Maggie, Colin, Diana and Mallory who appear as recurring doubles: Quinn is a tech support worker at a computer store, Wade is a journalist, Rembrandt is a music teacher, the Professor is the Professor, Maggie is a cop, Colin is an airplane mechanic, Diana is a doctor, Mallory is a thief.

Then in the season finale, the new sliders realize that these guest-stars they've met along the way were split across multiple realities as fragments, and the new sliders have to recombine these fragments in order to get Quinn's help to fix their broken timer.

This might happen for flashbacks or isolated sequences. SAVED BY THE BELL's revival had some comedy flashbacks to old episodes where everything was filmed in 4:3 with a filter over the image to mimic a fuzzy analog videotape.

But it's unlikely that any 2023+ production is going to mimic the limitations and dialogue and cinematography and lighting of a 1994 show for the entirety of running length. Why would any TV show spend more money to look cheap and dated beyond individual scenes?

Oops, it seems I've completely misused the term "production values" which seems to refer to only the technical things like video and sound quality, costume and set quality, special effects quality etc.   I meant to refer to the artistic side of things, the way the stories are written, the dialogue, the plot pacing, the plot devices, the personalities of characters, their grammar, the composition of the music (instead of its technical aspects like sampling rate, bit depth, number of channels etc.).

Great post - I enjoyed reading it.

In my view the limitation can function as its strength.  An example might be retro video games - why would anyone play around with simple blocky 2D graphics when you can have massive 3D worlds?   Because those limited graphics and sound have a certain charm to them.   

The way I see it, the 16:9 frame is like a canvas and you can put whatever you want in there.  Framing and composition within the 16:9 frame doesn't necessarily have to be 16:9.   Again, I'm not proposing to put black bars down the sides, I'm only talking about the composition/framing of shots.   What if the director wanted to use a wider aspect like 1.85:1 - is this allowed?

But ultimately it comes down to this: I've never seen a remake that wasn't a shadow of its former self.

Well, as long as it doesn't have "millenial writing" I could probably still enjoy it.

Episode 1.02 of QUANTUM LEAP 2.0, "Atlantis" is a pretty fun TV budgeted APOLLO 13. There is still a hyperemphasis on problem solving that Temporal Flux pointed out and a deliberate de-emphasis on intrigue with Addison not allowed to give Ben any biographical details of his own life. But the acting really sells it with Addison's longing, need, loneliness and loss and Ben being clueless yet a gifted improviser. The episode does seem to forget (or didn't budget for) more than a few shots of antigravity inside the spaceship, and there are too many shots where gravity is obviously present as astronauts walk.

There is a beautiful shot of Ben in his spacesuit and Addison in her business casual wear standing in the vacuum of space. A stunning widescreen shot of Ben and Addison standing at opposite ends of the 16:9 frame.

I don't understand how it could be reasonable to (hypothetically) expect QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 to film this shot for a 4:3 ratio in 2023 when nobody in 2023 would be watching it on a 4:3 TV, just because the original QUANTUM LEAP was broadcast in 4:3 back in 1989.

I don't understand how QUANTUM LEAP in 2023 could somehow be (hypothetically) considered "a shadow of itself" for not looking like it did 34 years ago; I also don't see how a version of SLIDERS made today could (hypothetically) be found wanting for looking like it was made today.

It would be fair to call QL2.0 "a shadow of itself" because its writing doesn't inspire or because it's characters lack flair and fun or because its mystery lacks a sense of the mysterious. Many people have made those comments about the earlier episodes of QL2.0. But whatever QL2.0's issues (and it has issues), I don't think it would be (hypothetically) fair to say that a 2023 QUANTUM LEAP is "a shadow of itself" for not looking like it was filmed during the Bush Sr. administration.

I don't think we can ever ask any revival of any property also revive the era in which it was made. That's too much to ask of any TV show. Instead, we should ask that the revival demonstrate that the concept -- whether it's GILMORE GIRLS or THE X-FILES or SLIDERS or QUANTUM LEAP or iCARLY or PARTY DOWN or PUNKY BREWSTER -- be presented as current and relevant today.

What this YouTuber terms "millennial writing" already has a commonly used term of reference called "Buffy Speak".

Buffy Speak is where characters deliver expository dialogue with a distinct adjectival-noun structure ("Pointy-stick thingy of pointiness") or incomplete simile ("That happened a long time ago, like so long ago that I can't remember how long ago it was.") and uses deliberate oververbosity and acknowledgement of overdescription, indicating that characters are having trouble expressing their emotions or the situations at hand.

It is a style of dialogue popularized (but not created) by disgraced fake feminist Joss Whedon on BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. Buffy Speak is a TV version of adjective-noun arrangement found in William Shakespeare's plays (16th century) and Charles Dickens' novels (19th century), so for the YouTuber to claim it's exclusive to "millennials" (1980 - 2004) is... less than accurate.

To associate recursive adjective-noun descriptions, self-aware overelaboration and incomplete comparison with "millennials" reveals an unfortunate reactionary reflex. It makes the complainant seem like someone angry that the world moved on, that stylistic markers shifted, that phones no longer use rotary dials, angry at anything new to the point where they don't recognize when something is actually quite old (and merely in semi-modern, colloquial English).

Yes, Buffy Speak can be poorly written, but that doesn't make the style worthless. And yes, it's human nature to gravitate to artistic styles that reflect what we became familiar with in our formative experiences, but that doesn't mean that styles outside our comfort zone should not exist.

TV can use different writing styles and no one style is 'bad'. TV may aim for melodramatic exaggeration (ARROW, THE FLASH), it may attempt hyperverbose procedural deliberation (THE WEST WING), it may offer expository sincerity (SLIDERS in its first two seasons), it might go for grounded minimalism with one hyperexaggerated character (THE BLACKLIST) or it might offer hyperstylized comedic banter (COMMUNITY).

The question is whether the style is used appropriately and effectively. Relentless witticisms of tangential observations might be great for an office comedy like PARKS AND RECREATION but ill-advised for a murder mystery show like CORONER. Dour assessments of conflicts might be well-suited to an FBI procedural like BLINDSPOT but poorly applied to a mother-daughter dramedy like GILMORE GIRLS.

It's vain to claim that any style of linguistic arrangement and expression we don't care for is objectively bad. We might instead ask: is this particular style is being executed to its full advantages? Is the style well-matched to the concept and characters? Instead of blaming the tools, we are better off asking how well the tools were used.

And since SLIDERS slides into a different genre in every episode, there is no reason why any one style of writing could be ruled out. It would simply be a matter of whether it is done well or done poorly which is the case for any style in any TV show.

I am currently on Episode 1.04 of QUANTUM LEAP 2.0. I didn't plan on watching more than 1.01 - 1.02 in the gym (to be ready to listen to REWATCH PODCAST cover it) -- but I was so enamoured with the series that I kept watching while I did my laundry and made dinner. I totally see and agree with pretty much all of the flaws that Temporal Flux and others pointed out in the show during these episodes. But... I find that the actors are really strong and are adding all of the elements that the scripts themselves are lacking.

Caitlin Bassett is a very strong actor; her exhaustive collapse and heartbreak in the boxing episode and the way she makes Addison struggle to keep it together as a hologram is really stirring. The scripts are a little clumsy, oversentimentalizing with guest-stars whom we barely know. I'm not super-intrigued by Ben's secret mission because it's just a blank space with no cluing for the audience to drive further speculations.

I think, just from what I've seen so far, QUANTUM LEAP is theoretically a show about holding up a mirror to our society and casting a critical eye on our societal faults and failings and how they've taken different forms in previous eras. In practice, QUANTUM LEAP is a sci-fi undercover 'spy' show about Dr. Ben Song taking on different identities. The mirror is a little unpolished and unwieldy.

But Bassett's strong performance and Raymond Lee's gleeful joy are both highly compelling. The actors are making these somewhat vague characters absolutely riveting to me. Even though I recognize that what is on paper is a little lacking, the actors are bridging the gap of content and I feel connected to the characters and their plight. Bassett and Lee make me feel for Addison and Ben (although, of course, I recognize that QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 is Ben's show, not Addison's).

QUANTUM LEAP 2.0 continues to be, for me, highly enjoyable mediocrity. It's clearly a difficult situation for the writers. Each episode has to introduce a new set of guest characters and a new setting for the duration of one episode and balance that with the Project Quantum Leap scenes in the present day. As a result, either the Project QL gets underserved or the guest characters and setting are underdeveloped.

The original pilot, repurposed as Episode 1.06, for example, doesn't really give enough for Ben to do during the earthquake scenario: he's mostly running and lifting things. It's okay. It's mediocre. I can't say why NBC and Martin Gero elected to make this 1.06 instead of 1.01, but the equally mediocre broadcast series premiere offered Ben a wider variety of situations to broaden the character: he's a getaway car driver, he's a criminal blackmailing other criminals, he's an undercover cop, he has a dance floor setpiece. Of course, 1.06 may have had just as much range for Ben before it was revised and reshot.

Episode 1.07, the EXORCIST-homage, is a perfectly adequate and at times enjoyable episode of QUANTUM LEAP. However, the writing is still struggling a bit. Ben is supposed to be a genius level intellect, yet he doesn't instantly spot that he started hallucinating immediately after drinking the gin. Ben is supposed to be an engineer and physicist and expert computer programmer, yet he doesn't recognize that the visual representation of the 'demon' coincided with Addison's hologram misfiring and is a holographic anomaly rather than a supernatural one.

The issue here: the writers are providing the audience with clues and making them obvious, yet Ben doesn't spot them which means the audience is ahead of Ben and the audience feels smarter than Ben when it's supposed to be the other way around. The script tries to have Ben notice the gin subconsciously in a dream sequence, but it's Ben catching up to the audience. This sort of thing may happen when there's been some upheaval in the writing staff with the original showrunners replaced and the incoming team is still getting a feel for the characters and actors.

QL2.0 has, however, cast the characters extremely well. Ernie Hudson as Magic is a pleasure: his voice has such weight and charm to it that it's enjoyable to hear him speak the same way it's wonderful just to listen to John Rhys-Davies' voice. Raymond Lee is really strong as a viewpoint character who seems like a blank slate but displays surprising bursts of knowledge and ability. Caitlin Bassett is an incredibly strong screen presence who commands attention and the acting is making up for a lot of the scripting weaknesses. Bassett makes me feel like Addison and Ben have an deep connection; Lee convinces me that Ben's a genius even when the script isn't totally on his side.

The scripts are also effective in their use of past continuity. The grim observation that Sam Beckett never made it home is a powerful way to highlight the disappointment of the original QL cancellation and creates a dire sense of peril for Ben Song. The revelation that Project Quantum Leap was shuttered and closed down after losing contact with Sam in the original QL finale is very, very sad. There's a palpable sense of loss that Al died in 2021 never reuniting with Sam, never knowing what became of him.

However, the presence of Beth Calavicci and her daughter Janis reminds us that Sam succeeded in reuniting Al and Beth in the final episode of QUANTUM LEAP 1.0, reminding us that Sam made a difference in Al's life that reverberates into the present. I've never even seen QUANTUM LEAP 1.0 past the original pilot episode (and my awareness of its continuity here comes from listening to REWATCH PODCAST cover it), and I could still feel that sense of history and legacy.

Didn't season 5 of sliders have a tranny episode? 'To catch a slider'

Hi, ireactions here. As a moderator on this forum, I apologize for this poster's use of this derogatory and hateful slur towards transgendered individuals and communities. Further instances of this will not be permitted. Sliders.TV is not a place of transphobia.

Such hate and vitriol. Never would have expected ireactions to call for forced education. That is a a tactic out of Stalin's playbook. Ask yourself why you always hear the name 'Hitler' and never hear the names of Stalin (13 million dead), and Mao Zedong(11 million dead).

When we say "Trumper", I think of someone who is racist, anti-semitic, homophobic and engages in anti-vaccine pandemic denialism. In reviewing Lego_Sliders's post history, I have not seen racism, anti-semitism, homophobia or vaccine misinformation. I feel gratitude and appreciation to Lego_Sliders for cautioning me about signing up for an experimental sixth dose of COVID-19 vaccine (that got shut down).

Unfortunately, looking at the post history, I see what looks like transphobia and it fills me with grief.

There's this post where Lego_Sliders posted a panel of a JOKER comic where the Joker is pregnant:

On its own, that might have been commenting on the biological absurdity (which we could also say of Rembrandt being pregnant in "The Prince of Slides").

But then we have this post where Lego_Sliders uses a transphobic slur:

"Tranny" is a derogatory pejorative for transgender individuals, specifically to attack and deride people for their gender identities. Could it be an accident? People here misgendered supervillain Ezra Miller without any malevolence. Sometimes, we're not aware that common parlance has become offensive.

As moderator, I edited the quoted post to apologize for the use of this slur from a poster and I apologize again. Hate speech is not permitted here.

Then we have this over my QUANTUM LEAP 1.12 review where I called it overwritten but said that its message was necessary yet "overstated":

It's an absurd leap of non-logic to declare that 24 million people will die because I said transgender people have human rights.

I don't mind when people insult me or my writing, opinions or analytical style. People are welcome to do it. There's this special episode of REWATCH PODCAST where Tom and Cory call out all the plotholes and errors in my fanfic. They're reading a script; I wrote that script.

But this has gone beyond attacking me personally. The broadcast of an anti-transphobia episode of television that nobody has to watch is not "forced education". A review of that episode is not "forced education". Furthermore, the review being cited expresses (joking) 'hate' and vitriol towards an overly lecturing writing style for scripted conversations and calls that style dated and out of touch.

It's downright odd that someone would be offended by me saying that society needs to learn that transgendered individuals should have human rights, to accuse me of calling for "forced education". People are educated to learn that assault is wrong, that theft is wrong, that talking in a movie theatre is wrong, that stealing someone's Lego is wrong. Lego_Sliders would never call that "forced education".

So what we have here: offense towards a comedic drawing of a pregnant man; the use of a transphobic slur; calling respect for transgender identity to be "forced education".

In totality, all of the above examples demonstrate a focused and extreme anger towards transgender individuals having human rights. A level of anger that overrides sense and reason. There doesn't seem to be any other motive for why my decidedly mixed review of the anti-transphobia episode of QUANTUM LEAP would prompt this mania:

I'm going to dismiss your insults towards me. Even the very best of friends will say the wrong things at the wrong times. But I can't dismiss transphobia.

Now, I don't fully grasp transgender identity and community. Those are life experiences I will never have. But I don't need to understand someone's personal identity to respect it so long as that identity isn't based in transphobia or bigotry towards how people were born. No one was born a fascist.

I don't know what you got away with before you came here, but this is Sliders.TV. Thinly-veiled or unveiled, Lego or no Lego, transphobia has no place here.

As someone who appreciates you, I am going to ask you to reach into yourself. I will ask you to find the generosity of spirit and that warmth of character that inspires you to create with Lego and share your delight and joy with us. I'm going to ask you to commit some of that generosity -- of which I know that you have a great deal -- towards people who find that due to brain chemistry and genetics, they were born in a body that doesn't suit them and that they need to change in order to live as themselves.

There are some transgender fans of SLIDERS reading this thread and post right now and wondering if Sliders.tv is a safe space for them or if they're going to regularly see hate rhetoric directed at them for their gender identities. They shouldn't have to wonder.

I feel like in this situation, a moderator would issue warnings or lay out consequences, but I can't do that right this moment. After all that Lego, surely Lego_Sliders is our friend. For now, I'm instead going to say:

Lego_Sliders, I am deeply hurt and heartbroken by these transphobic remarks from a friend and fellow SLIDERS creator. As your friend, I'm asking you: please don't do this again.

And as Lego_Sliders's friend, I would say that if Lego_Sliders were to make no further transphobic remarks in this community, I would have to conclude that Lego_Sliders was temporarily poisoned by dropping some Lego on a stove burner that someone forgot to turn off, that the fumes were eroding Lego_Sliders's good judgement and inherent love and respect for humanity, and that all these were just unfortunate glitches that two friends can set aside going forward.

I've spoken to you as a friend, now I'm speaking to you as a moderator: if you want to keep posting here, there can be no further transphobia in your posts. No slurs, no claims that transgender rights advocacy is "forced education" or akin to mass murder, not even the veiled remarks from before. Transgender fans of SLIDERS (and I know of at least three with accounts here) have the right to be here without seeing themselves, their community and their rights attacked in any way for what are personal choices in how they address their own mental health and self-image and bodies, choices that do not physically or practically affect anyone but themselves. We mustn't hurt people for that. We can't treat people that way here. We have to be better than that. We have to be kinder than that.

This is a very interesting question. The answer is in this thread title. This thread opened on March 4, 2021. Two years later, it has 535 replies and it will have more to come. Why is that? Because this thread represents a universal human longing for a second chance.

What happened to you with your first chance? I don't know. I don't know your story. But what would be the point of me verbally assailing you? QuinnSlidr seems to have that covered. Did QuinnSlidr make you reconsider your attitude to transgender identity? Or did it just put you on the defensive?

I don't know what drove to you consider it "hate and vitriol" when I reviewed an episode of QUANTUM LEAP and said that transgender rights are human rights.

Maybe you grew up in an environment where authority figures spoke derisively of gender-nonconformity and you've internalized that as a societal norm and because of that bad influence, you unravel when that norm is identified as a prejudice.

Maybe you weren't trained by parents and teachers for exposure to people with differing belief systems and practices that have no direct impact on you; they didn't prepare you to manage social shock, and so you react with fear and accusation that you regret.

Maybe you've been sexually assaulted and you associate non-heterosexual and non-genderconforming individuals with deviant perpetrators of sexual violence because you've been traumatized.

Maybe you've suffered rejection and felt powerless and clung to gender identity (and who knows what else) to feel value, and your instinct is that deriding other identities will give you a (false) sense of power.

Maybe at some point in your past, you were in a troubled and vulnerable state and received no sympathy, no understanding, no empathy, but were instead met with derision and anger -- and now that's how you react to certain concepts of identity that make you think of deeply disturbing memories.

Maybe you've had some other experience entirely that is too mundane and straightforward for me to imagine.

Maybe whatever happened to you was neither mundane nor straightforward but some ghastly and horrific event or sequence of events that you haven't even begun to process.

Maybe what you said isn't who you really are and you said what you did because you've been triggered and you're upset and you're not thinking clearly and you're in pain.

Maybe you just need some sympathy and understanding and a chance to change course.

Or maybe nothing happened to you. I don't know everything inside you, I don't know your life. But people don't set aside prejudices when they feel under attack; they cling to them more tightly because it's their security blanket and the way they feel they can put the world in order.

However, they may set them aside if they're asked to treat others better and given some assurance that the new behaviour they're asked to give is also what they'll receive.

Is there anyone reading this who wouldn't like a chance to start over with the benefit of what they know today?

Every SLIDERS fan knows what it's like to regret how things went and wish that they had done things differently. Every fan of SLIDERS wishes that they could redo the last five seasons of life with better script editing, tighter continuity, stronger performances, healthier relationships, fewer dead actors, lower cost overruns, more location filming, and a wholehearted commitment to treating others well. Who here would deny you -- or themselves -- the opportunity to start over and do better?

Who here wouldn't ask for a reboot?

THE REWATCH PODCAST reviewed episodes 5 - 6 of QUANTUM LEAP 2.0.
https://therewatchpodcast.blogspot.com/ … 05-06.html

They don't think that the plotline of Ben trying to connect with his mother was part of the original Episode 6 back when it was meant to be Episode 1. Yes, the plotline mirrors the original premiere of the 1989 QUANTUM LEAP. But Tom and Cory note: QL2.0 starts with Ben's memory having been erased. He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know who Addison is. The later episodes are scripted around Addison deliberately avoiding any triggers for Ben's memory. Would Ben even remember anything about his mother in the original QL2.0 pilot?

Tom also presented my theory and then Temporal Flux's theory for why QL2.0 has no Waiting Room. https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php … 888#p13888

My theory was written to assist Tom and written before I had actually seen the show and I was just filibustering with technobabble. I was impressed and horrified by how Tom in the podcast reads out my theory and demonstrates a shocking gift for delivering my unreadable, unsayable paragraphs of convoluted impenetrability. Tom offers Temporal Flux's theory after mine and TF's theory is actually fit for human consumption.

Anyway. I had to take a break from QL2.0 to enjoy the epic EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE over a few days, but I am getting back into QL2.0 tomorrow!