Coral Canvass Closed! Anniversary Adventures Announced! Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 1st February 2023, 00:01 My dearest friends, I hereby declare that voting for the Coral Canvass, our mega 35th anniversary poll, is now OVER. A huge thank you to everyone who took part and indeed helped us spread the word. Submission numbers were way beyond our expectations - more than double the amount of responses we got for the Pearl Poll five years ago. And let me tell you, the results are very interesting indeed. You think certain episodes' positions are set in stone? Think again. All will be revealed at 9am on Wednesday 15th February, right here on ganymede.tv. But that's not all! For the previous two milestone anniversaries, we've accompanied the results with a little anniversary party in the form of a Live DwarfCast. This year is no exception, other than the small detail that it will be a Live Video DwarfCast instead! That's right, not only will you have to put up with irritating voices, you also have to see our repugnant faces too. So make a note in your diary to be online at 9pm on Wednesday 15th February over on our Youtube channel (though the video will be embedded here too). We'll be discussing the poll results in full, as well as dealing with your live waffles and also playing a little game... Read more →
G&TV: Chute! (13/12/07) Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 18th January 2023, 09:37 We must admit, all our efforts are currently focused on preparing for our epic 35th anniversary spectacular, details of which will be revealed when the Coral Canvass closes on 1st February. (Have you voted yet? Go and vote!) So it's time to dust off an old favourite strand in order to ensure there's at least one update in January. What do you mean it's been nearly a year since the last G&TV? Can't be, it says here it's a regular look at Red Dwarf related archival treats. Ahem. Anyway, this "month's" curiosity is a programme that I've only recently become aware of, but would no doubt have been one of my all time favourites had it aired ten or fifteen years earlier. Running for just thirteen episodes in 2007, Chute! was a CBBC show set in a rubbish tip at Television Centre, in which presenter Ross Lee is trapped with only thousands of discarded video tapes for company. Although despite Ross being apparently unable to escape, he's frequently joined by other characters and personalities from the CBBC stable, including on one occasion Lenny Bicknall from MI High, as played by one Daniel Jonathan-Julians. Read more →
The G&T Review of the Year 2022 Features Posted by Ian Symes on 31st December 2022, 15:43 Hello everyone... Much of my time at the moment is taken up with travelling all over the internet to promote The Coral Canvass, and quite frankly, I am really enjoying it. It's great to see everyone voting, and it marks our first poll where you rate each episode out of ten instead of listing them all in order. I very much look forward to seeing more votes come in over the coming month. Away from the happy, positive world of anniversary polls, you may have noticed that, as far as the ‘Red Dwarf’ picture is concerned, the legal battle for GNP continues to bore, while our incompetent (by design) production company is as usual hellbent on suing each other instead of making new episodes. This situation looks set to continue as the Grantists now have their man in place, a person utterly and totally suited to pushing on with the new world order’s so called ‘buttski’ programme to enslave humanity under never-ending spin-offs. Look, I know many of you must be thinking ‘Blimey, G&T has lost it big time!’, but believe me, once you can see it, you can’t unsee it! All rather worrying frankly… Read more →
Introducing the G&T Coral Canvass Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 19th December 2022, 09:04 It will hardly have escaped anyone’s attention that 2023 is Red Dwarf‘s 35th anniversary year. And as tradition dictates, every five years we gather as many fans as possible, from every corner of the internet, to construct the ultimate ranking of each and every episode, and determine once and for all that the winner is Back To Reality again. 2013 was the Silver Survey. 2018 was the Pearl Poll. And now, 2023 is the year of the Coral Canvass. But hold your horses, G&T regulars, because we're doing things a little differently this time... Read more →
DwarfCast 158 – Seb Patrick’s 40th DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 30th November 2022, 08:20 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes This is a most unusual DwarfCast following a most unusual weekend for your intrepid G&T team. The three of us gathered together in the same place for this first and only time this year, and that place was Liverpool. The reason? Seb Patrick's 40th birthday, and we weren't going to let the small detail that he himself has passed on stop us from celebrating. We wanted to share the festivities with some of the people who knew Seb, be they friends, family or just those who knew him through his work, in the Red Dwarf community and beyond. So join us for a somewhat experimental travelogue, taking in Danny's first ever football experience, a trip to a certain Liverpudlian pub, a game of pool on a very important table and our first visit to Seb's memorial bench at Crosby Beach. We promised to record a DwarfCast there if the petition was successful, and thanks to your help, it was. Read more →
Save Page 61 Features Posted by Flap Jack on 25th November 2022, 08:00 Previously on G&T: Regular reader Flap Jack put us all to shame with his incredibly detailed examination of the changes between hardback, paperback, Omnibus and unabridged audiobook versions of the four Red Dwarf novels. Now he's back to finish the job, with an examination of the abridged audiobooks. Imagine: it’s 1993, and you’re excitedly rushing home after picking up a copy of the newly released Red Dwarf Series 1 VHS. You heat yourself up a bowl of alphabetti spaghetti, grab a Leopard Lager from the fridge, and start up the tape to watch The End. But part way through, you start to realise something’s wrong. What happened to the subplot about Rimmer’s exam? Wasn’t there a scene where you see Lister with Frankenstein before he gets in trouble with the Captain? What’s going on? You double check the VHS sleeve, and realise to your horror that it doesn’t say “Series I Byte One” but “Series I Abridged”! You try to scream, but discover your mouth is sealed shut. You run to the door, but behind it is just a brick wall. You look back at the alphabetti spaghetti: all ampersands. Read more →
Wrinkles Wrecovered News Posted by Ian Symes on 14th November 2022, 09:37 I bring very exciting news. You know Wrinkles? The radio sitcom written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, which ran for two series in 1980 and 1981? The one that starred Ballard Berkeley from Fawlty Towers and David Ross from Kryten, White Hole and Mechocracy? The one that is missing from the archives and has never been repeated in the four decades since it was originally broadcast? Well, it's being repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra on Thursdays at 10:30pm. Read more →
DwarfCast 157 – Re-Disc-overy: Series 1 DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 4th November 2022, 08:00 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes The first Red Dwarf DVD was released twenty years ago today. Yes, we regret to inform you that you're old. The fourth of November 2002 is a date indelibly printed on the brains of fans who spent months being teased and tantalised into a frenzy. Kids today with your YouTubes and your Netflixes and your Ministry of Sound may not appreciate just how big of a deal it was for Dwarf to join the digital revolution in such a wholehearted way, so gather round and listen to your Uncles Cappsy, Danny and Ian as we kick off a new series of DwarfCast retrospectives. For each edition of Re-Disc-overy, we're going to be sharing our memories of each DVD release, looking back on the media and fandom landscapes of the time, and of course revisiting and reassessing the many, many special features. Plus, we've picked out one extra per series to receive the commentary treatment, and this time it could only be Launching Red Dwarf. So get that lovely red box off your shelf, remove the dust from your ageing DVD player and join us as we discuss Red Dwarf's greatest unsung hero, unicycling jugglers, embarrassing Dimension Jump memories, the glory of Woolworths and much much more. Read more →
DwarfCast 156 – The Smegazine Rack – Issue #6 DwarfCasts Posted by Jonathan Capps on 28th October 2022, 16:52 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes Hello hello and welcome back onto the rack. In a shock twist that even we didn't expect, we've actually come good on our promise to start up our regular DwarfCasting routine again. This time Cappsy, Danny and Ian are going page by page through Issue 6 of the Smegazine, which gives them plenty of opportunity to be all smug and self regarding about those early 90s idiots and their casual ableism and homophobia. Hurrah! Read more →
Revisions Timetable Features Posted by Flap Jack on 12th October 2022, 08:55 In the latest example of our readers being better than us at writing articles these days, we're proud to present an extremely niche but very important missive from Flap Jack. Ever since recording the Book Club, we've wanted to catalogue all the changes made within the various releases of the Red Dwarf novels. In a beautiful piece of synchronicity, old Flappo Jacko got in touch a few weeks ago having done exactly that. This is the first of two articles investigating the amendments to those sacred texts. Red Dwarf is no stranger to having its episodes tweaked with over time. From smaller changes like the word “week’s” being omitted from the opening of Polymorph on VHS, to the huge reworks made for the controversial Red Dwarf Remastered project, you can never be absolutely sure that your favourite moments will be unaltered whenever the show is released onto a new format. But there’s one corner of the Dwarf canon where this phenomenon has so far only experienced surface-level scrutiny: the novels. If you’ve ever read Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers on paperback and then later re-experienced it on audiobook - or in the Omnibus edition with its sequel, Better Than Life - you’ll probably have noticed that a few things here and there aren’t quite the same. How many details were changed from version to version, exactly, and what were they? Today, let’s find the answers, piece by piece. Read more →
