Rob Grant does some fucking work

Or, rather, has been fucking working. With all the fuss about the upcoming movie and DVD releases, it’s easy to forget that Rob is trucking along doing his own completely-non-Dwarf-related things (although we haven’t forgotten that he did at one point promise a sequel to Backwards…) And that at the moment happens to be books. First off is Incompetence, slated for release on the 31st December. Thank Back In The Redfor reminding us all; it had been mentioned on various Dwarf sites a while back as Matt says, but everyone seemed to have forgotten about it. Including us. See BITR or Amazon for the synopsis; it sounds worryingly like an excuse for a load of pointless misguided PC-bashing, but surely Grant wouldn’t subject us to that?

What we don’t think has been widely reported is Colony II, due to be released bang at the start of 2005. No synopsis as yet. The first book had a mixed reaction from some (I’m afraid I haven’t read it all yet, pathetic idiot that I am); some seemed to feel that it started well, but tailed off. Whatever; both books will be well worth snapping up purely for Grant’s extremely amusing prose style, if for nothing else. Let’s hope they’re fantastic; they should be. I’m excited already.

Onto other business. The wonderful Austin Ross has pointed us towards this article on Cult TV awards. Red Dwarf is up for “DVD of the year”, along with: Doctor Who Dalek Invasion of Earth, Edge of Darkness, Joe 90, and ST: DS9. Obviously, we hope Dwarf wins, although nobody can deny how spectacular the work done by The Doctor Who Restoration Team is – look at the article about the DVD up for nomination. And considering how popular Doctor Who still is amongst hardcore Cult TV fans… we can only hope.

Meanwhile, it’s action stations at The White Hole. There’s another contribution to the excellent Red Dwarf and Me. However, their latest project has also been released: Darkside of the Dwarf, concentrating on negative aspects of the show. It contains an interesting and mostly correct (in our opinion) article from Cappsy, and an equally interesting but completely wrong (in our opinion) article from a certain Julian Hazeldine; the premise of which seems to be that Red Dwarf is “has comprehensively failed to appeal to a wider audience”. When you consider that the (admittedly highest) viewing figures for VIII was 8 million viewers (fucking high for BBC TWO; Red Dwarf frequently topped the weekly viewing figures charts for the channel), and that the DVD for Series I was second only to The Office for the biggest selling BBC DVD for 2002, the argument doesn’t really hold water. And besides, it’s a rubbish argument anyway; since when did something have to be popular to be good? It’s almost as if it was written deliberately to annoy. Tsk.

As for our site, you’ll notice that the ATVRD section (containing docs/links to various stuff to do with the alt.tv.red-dwarf newsgroup) has disappeared. That’s because it’s due a big refurbishment (due to me taking over a couple more documents) and it suits my personal site better. I’ll put a link to it here in a few days when it’s ready. What with this, and the removal of our woefully inadequate Schedule section, our poor navbar was getting a bit upset; so, to make it feel better, we’re launching a new section tomorrow. Also up tomorrow: exclusive pictures of me acting like a cunt at Memorabilia. Excellent.