John’s Newsround – 16/7/05 News Posted by John Hoare on 16th July 2005, 17:49 TOS updates time. Firstly: fantastic. That is all. I could go through the storyboards and give you excepts from the script, but I value both my freedom and my testicles. The other piece is also DVD-related, and is a fantastic look at the new Dwarf releases around the world – a perfect combination of advertising and anal fan ramblings. I feel sorry for the Portuguese – the book chapters or music featurette I could do without, but no music cues or raw effects footage? Two of the best extras on the Series 1 release? I wonder why they were left out. Rights? Or did the people releasing it over there just think people wouldn’t be interested? It gets worse for the Benelux version, however – the Re-mastered version? Aaargh. Over the past two years co-running this site, I’ve gone from being very judgemental about everything to, erm, still being very judgemental about everything but with an apology for being like that beforehand – but the Re-mastered versions are an abomination, and I can’t see any possible reason for anyone preferring them. Even Doug Naylor has expressed doubts about them in interviews. A hideous, hideous release. And presumably the reason the the cast commentaries aren’t on there because they don’t match up with the Re-mastered episodes, so it’s a double loss. Still, all the menu designs look lovely. Although this picture is just fascinating – what kind of cultural differences exist to mean that they went to all the trouble to change the colours of the buttons? Nice to hear that Japan is finally going to get the long-rumoured version with extras. Excellently, “regular series releases more akin to the UK versions” sounds like they’ll be getting dubbed versions of the original episodes, rather than the Re-mastered (the pictures are from the current, Re-mastered releases). So hooray for the Japanese. As for BBC Japan, their site wins the award for the most annoying in the world, for rendering perfectly in Firefox but coming up with a warning message each time to navigate to a different page informing me that “This site only supports IE5 upwards”. If someone could inform me how someone actually gets paid for designing such a pile of shit, I’d love to know. Mind you, I wished it had forbidden me access completely when I went to the comedy page in search of Dwarf info. Out of all the wonderful stuff you could broadcast over there… They obviously only show THE BEST.
Well I think the ‘Fantastic’ speaks for itself… I have to say the foreign releases is a whole new area for me to contemplate as apart from the cunning Japanese I had never really thought about foreign versions at all…I should imagine Drum is rattling his piggy bank already in eager anticipation…Andrew has mentioned on the webboard today these releases, and the post implies it will be some considerable time before all VIII series are released.
Who’s the young lady by the way, is she in someway connected or maybe an Anne Summers Rep from Portugal!
Woah…45 minutes for Identity Within? That’s fucking great and unexpected. It’s maybe still a pity that the script is untouched from the draft, but…what’s the point in complaining when we’re getting the greatest extra since Life in Lame?
> the greatest extra since Life in Lame *splutter* I’d still be interested in seeing Andrew’s original version of that. As it is on the DVD, it adds nothing – no jokes and a collection of clips we’ve already seen does not an interesting extra make.
> Woah…45 minutes for Identity Within? That’s fucking great and unexpected. It is, actually. I suspected it’d be around 20 or so. Pretty amazing. > It’s maybe still a pity that the script is untouched from the draft I suspect part of this, as well as wanting to retain the writers original vision (what’s the point in including stuff that was rewritten *purely* because of budget cuts?) is because later drafts had Kochanski rather than Rimmer in it. If you’re going to get Chris Barrie to do the voices, it would be slightly bizarre not to do the version with Rimmer…
> Andrew informed me that “more pics of her would be appreciated”. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. Teh Ellard having influence on G&T there… > I’d still be interested in seeing Andrew’s original version of that. I’m not going to pretend that the unseen version would have changed many people’s reactions to the extra – the final one WAS culled from it’s footage. But it had a very different structure – one that plugged my theory that Ace’s appearance in Emohawk was a direct influence on why his departure in Stoke worked (it suggested, as did DJ, that Rimemr DOES have the Ace capability inside him). It also had some gags that I rather liked – a boot-up sequence for Holly’s datafile akin to the Toaster waking up in White Hole; Holly’s bemused reaction after realising that ‘the best bottom to set foot on Red Dwarf’ doesn’t quite work as a statement… Ho-hum. > If you’re going to get Chris Barrie to do the voices, it would be slightly bizarre not to do the version with Rimmer. Absolutely. Also, I felt the Fuller drafts actually diminished a lot of what was interesting about the earlier drafts…and lost some of the more fun gag scenes.
>Holly’s bemused reaction after realising that ‘the best bottom to set foot on Red Dwarf’ doesn’t quite work as a statement… That actually sounds like a pretty good Holly gag to me.
>Is that Fuller as in more complete, or Fuller as in Kim? Presumably the latter : Scripts were given to the cast, rewrites performed by Blue writer Kim Fuller…
> Teh Ellard having influence on G&T there… It’s when it happens the other way round that you should worry…
>Andrew informed me that “more pics of her would be appreciated”. So that’s exactly what I’m doing. In that case, I’m putting in a request for more pics of Zach Braff.
No cast commentary? Remastered episodes?! I feel sorry for my fellow countrypeople and Belgians who buy this piss poor release. And also, calling it a scifi parody on the cover is just… stupid.
> And also, calling it a scifi parody on the cover is just… stupid. I hadn’t noticed that! That’s idiotic. I might write my “RD is not a SF parody” article at some point. Even though every point in it is patently bloody obvious.
Well, the letters on the cover aren’t entirely clear, I’ll grant you that. Plus, you probably don’t actually read Dutch. Still, parodie = parody. Idiots. Too bad I can’t actually read the blurb on the back, there’s bound to be some mistakes in that as well.
