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It’s the end! No, wait, the opposite of that. It’s The Beginning, as we draw our coverage of Series X to a close, just in time for the coverage of Series XI to begin. Join Jonathan Capps (via Skype), Tanya Jones, Danny Stephenson, Ian Symes and the Fan Club’s Jo Sharples as we discuss such burning issues as how many of the Rimmer brothers are illegitimate, what Arnold’s dying words actually were, including whether or not he even said “gazpacho soup” in the first place, and our feelings on Series X as a whole, with the benefit of nearly four years of thinking time.

Plus, we bring you a round-up of all the major Red Dwarf XI news that didn’t make it to the front page of G&T in the last week, and the long-awaited announcement of how exactly we’ll be covering the new series, bearing in mind that the release schedule for each episode is a confusing, divisive mess. Listen to the DwarfCast for far too much detail about our reasoning, but the short version is this:

Live DwarfCasts at broadcast pace. Written material at online pace. Discussion threads for both. Everyone gets some coverage asap after they’ve watched it, and nobody has to miss out on anything they can’t catch up on. Let’s make the TV broadcast the big event, and treat the online releases as an optional preview.

And with this plan now in place, we vow to cease moaning about the decision to premiere the episodes online – let’s just get on with making the best of it.

DwarfCast 78 – The Beginning (42.2MB)

DwarfCasts will return, LIVE, on Thursday 22nd September at 10pm. Until then, check in regularly, as G&T will be the place to be for all the Red Dwarf XI reaction and analysis, regardless of how you intend to watch the series.

27 comments on “DwarfCast 78 – The Beginning Commentary

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  • I’ve always secretly believed that Rimmer didn’t cause the accident in the first place. Holly just implanted the memory in his head and faked the death video just to shame Rimmer into staying on as the ship’s hologram.

    Anyway…

  • I’m very happy with your plan for the Red Dwarf XI coverage. I see the online versions as previews anyway, so it makes sense to keep the broadcast as the main event. It certainly encourages us to try and watch it at the same time like in the good old days. You’ve left the option open to discuss the new episodes online as they become available, so I think you’ve got the balance right. I very much approve sirs!

  • Still not a fan of the father revelation, i don’t think it makes sense of anything but more complexes things along with the episode ‘trojan’

    In this commentary you guys say it makes sense for why he resents Rimmer or something to that degree but thing is Rimmers family life has been described over the years in much more of a complex way to be explained away by head canon because of one rushed quick throw in revelation

    There has been so much detail in various books and episodes to go by like in BTL rimmer explains his father was strict on him and his brothers, stretching them because so they wouldn’t be below regulation height (like he was) or forcing them to succeed or they didn’t get food, yes that was an asshole-ish thing to do but that doesn’t sound like resentment that sounds more like someone pushing their kids to do what he couldn’t do, Rimmer did describe him in the inquisitor as a half crazed military failure after all.

    And yeah we got the idea in the last day and Queeg that his mother was unfaithful but then that leaves questions about his brothers who we got the idea in polymorph Rimmer was still the undergod of his brothers even though it turns out howard is just like rimmer and we see abit of frank in timeslides but that isn’t much to go by for him beyond the BTL novel.

    IMO i think Doug should just have left Rimmers family life alone, but then i also think he went abit far making lister his own dad with kochanski his mother in a circle that has no beginning or end

  • As for Rimmers last words, Even though Lister got one little quip in about the soup in Me2. I Believed after that he did decide never to mention it again. ( although the only person who probably didn’t know in the room was Kryten.

  • Rimmer’s death video/actual death. The video totally fucks up the positioning of the piles of dust in the Drive Room in The End.

    Yeah.

  • FWIW – yes, my favourite scene in the whole of X is the disembowelling scene in The Beginning.

    One of the few bits ever in Dwarf to have me in uncontrollable laughter. See also: “I need it to turn the lights off and on” in Legion.

  • See also: “I need it to turn the lights off and on” in Legion.

    This is my favorite line in Series 6 also, if not the whole of Dwarf. It’s just so stupid…

  • >This is my favorite line in Series 6 also, if not the whole of Dwarf. It’s just so stupid…

    Yeah, I love lines like the light switch gag. And this goes for even sillier gags in Series VIII like “The post’s arrived” and “Yeah, I’m appealing”.

    Whilst I appreciate a gag which takes work, sometimes it is just the simple and stupid stuff that tickles the funny bone most.

  • my not so amazing memory is fading now but at the recording after lister said that Rimmer’s final words were ” mummy mummy ”
    Rimmer replied ” no it was not it was gazpacho soup” to which Lister replied something along the lines “nuclear explosion coming down the corridor and you are ordering starters/lunch” something to that effect.

    was surprised when it was not on the deleted scenes, but i guess there are many slight cuts that never made the cut * sorry* for the Deleted scenes either.

  • I still love this episode and would have been A-OK with it as the last one ever if we’d never gotten Series XI. I do have some nitpicks, but not with the writing or acting (OK, I could have done with maybe one less repeat of “duel across time and space”, but that’s it).

    “Sometimes you live, you die, and then you live again. I know; I’ve done it myself,” is such a great dramatic line, but then it’s followed by completely inexplicable laughter. Even if the audience is reacting in a “haha, that’s awesome!” sort of way, it still really bothers me.

    Rewatching for the first time since seeing the XI trailers, the special effects don’t hold up nearly as well. The model shots themselves are great, but the compositing is pretty iffy all around. They’re not bad by any means, but they don’t blow me away the way they did when I first saw them. But the (engage Scottish Mode) Annihilators firing on Red Dwarf is still one of the best visual effects shots the show’s ever done with great comping.

  • Watching the alternate version of the drive room scene, shot on the night, sadly I think it’s a lot better. The cast’s performances are obviously better due to the audience reaction. There are also a few bits that Doug evidently cut before shooting the final version, like Kryten’s “it’s the whole might of the simulant force against you, sir” bit. I think that bit’s really good and it gets a good audience reaction and without it, Rimmer’s follow up line doesn’t really make sense which really annoys me! Why the hell was it cut.

  • See also: “I need it to turn the lights off and on” in Legion.

    This is my favorite line in Series 6 also, if not the whole of Dwarf. It’s just so stupid…

    And I noticed it nicked in Randle and Hopkirk Deceased a few years later, and again in something only recently.
    Though i think it is a variation on a joke used in a few bond films when Q has loads of gadgets around and then someone picks up something that turns out just to be his lunch. Its a great version of that, pull the rug, but about Art which is often far more pompus a subject.

  • So if the next Dwarfcast is live at 10pm on 22nd and the episode is available from this Thursday, am i right in thinking that you will keep the first Dwarfcast to be about Only Twentica etc and not mention Episode 2?

    As if that’s the case I think i will be watching Thursday and again next wednesday as a second or third watch, and then as I work until 10pm I might just be able to listen to near the beginning of the live dwarfcasts each week, before i venture onwards to any future online episodes probably on Friday nights or at the weekend for the rest, repeating that pattern. As I dont have a TV way to watch the episodes at all where i am, I will watch online on a laptop just a couple of times during the run each. Then get the DVD for big screen re-watches for future viewing when thats out.

    That actually works out that I probably miss less of your live dwarf casting than i did for most of series X.

  • Yes, each DwarfCast will be about the episode that’s just aired on telly. We may finish with a preview of the next episode (ie. the one that’s just turned up online), but if so it will be in a spoiler-free manner.

  • I just realized that Blue Midget’s legs are not merely unused but entirely gone. I’m extremely glad, because they were really stupid. Much like me for taking four years to notice.

  • Wait, lemme look closer…

    FUCK. THEY’RE STILL THERE. I THOUGHT THEY JUST LEFT THE TOP SEGMENT. Speaking of stupid, this makes me tens times worse for basing my assumption on angles where you couldn’t see the bottom.

    God, those legs were so awful and cartoony, and the arms doubly so. The whole walker design was such a “just because we can” thing, just like most of the changes made in the Remastered. It only fit in Series VIII because Series VIII was a cartoon. I can only pray that because Red Dwarf is all models again like it should be they won’t ever use the walker mode again.

  • At least in “The Beginning” they were given a properly functional use – imagine trying to design a battle plan timetable with the table at an angle.

  • Having a big, clunky, clumsy mechanical walker as a mining vehicle would be fine, cool even. But a shuttle craft with legs walking or running super gracefully like an animal, I don’t buy that as something that would exist in Lister’s time. And it doesn’t make sense to me to give Blue Midget legs when it’s a ship-to-surface shuttle. They’d presumably have smaller vehicles for transporting things around. Hell, a lot of the mining stuff would be probably be set up and waiting for them when they arrived since all these moons are populated. Every mining site would be vetted out, so no reason to go off exploring rough terrain.

    Oh right, I’m forgetting we’re talking about Red Dwarf Remastered. Their creative process was: “Hey, we didn’t have the technology to create this in 1988 and now we do, therefore it’s a good idea!”

    But those stupid fucking arms, however, were added in Series VIII, because how could a ship-to-surface shuttle craft do air guitar for a dance number without arms?

    I really like the idea of them being stuck in deep space with just a bunch of shitty mining ship shuttle craft that were only designed to ferry people ship-to-surface and back and having to regularly strain them far beyond their intended limits. I know you have to cheat a bit so every plot isn’t about dealing with crap technology, but I love the sense of desperation that comes with being forced to use extremely dodgy equipment in dangerous situations, or the dodgy equipment itself producing a dangerous situation.

  • those stupid fucking arms, however, were added in Series VIII, because how could a ship-to-surface shuttle craft do air guitar for a dance number without arms?

    Christ, how fucking embarrassing was that?

  • Watching The End: The Original Assembly, and Rimmer has the Series X hair except not jet-black or really weirdly combed.

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